F.P. Journe élégante Buying Guide: Calibre 1210, References, Prices | Ultimate Watch

The élégante is the watch that made a purist rethink quartz. François-Paul Journe, the Vallée de Joux independent whose mechanical work fills auction catalogs, introduced the élégante in 2014 as his first watch built for women and his first quartz movement in the same stroke. That order matters. Journe did not slap a battery into an existing case to chase volume. He spent close to eight years working with microelectronic engineers to build the Calibre 1210, an electromechanical movement with a two-rotor motor and a sleep function, and he put it inside the Flat Tortue barrel case in titanium, then Titalyt, then gold and platinum. We buy and sell F.P. Journe every month on 47th Street, and the élégante is one of the more misunderstood entries in the catalog. Collectors who dismiss it as a fashion quartz watch have not looked at what happened to the titanium 48 on the secondary market, where a piece that retailed around 20,000 dollars now trades well above that. This is a Journe first, a genuine horological experiment, and increasingly a collector target. Here is the full picture from someone who writes the checks.