Clé de Cartier

The Clé de Cartier arrived at SIHH in 2015 as the first genuinely new case shape Cartier had drawn in a long time, and the name tells you where to look. Clé is French for key, and the reference is the crown: an oblong winding key set with a blue synthetic spinel on steel or a sapphire cabochon on gold, shaped so it seats flush and clicks back into the same position every time. That crown is the whole idea. It reads like a wind-up key on the side of a case that curves in every direction, a rounded cushion with a bezel that flows into the lugs without a hard break. Cartier launched it alongside a new in-house automatic, the caliber 1847 MC, named for the house's founding year, so this was the rare Cartier that was new sheet metal and new engine at once. We stand behind the counter at 19 West 47th Street and we handle the Clé regularly on the buy side. It sits in an odd spot: a proper in-house Cartier at a price that undercut most of the Ballon Bleu and Santos automatics of its era, a watch that never sold in Santos volume and got quietly narrowed down over the following years. That combination of real manufacture movement, low original production, and a shape you either love on sight or walk past makes it one of the more interesting value conversations in the Cartier catalog right now.