Piaget Polo Buying Guide: Polo S, Polo Date and 1979 Gold Original | Ultimate Watch

The Polo's design DNA is the godron, the French term for the rounded parallel ridges that run across the whole watch. On the 1979 original there is effectively no bezel and no separate dial frame; the ridges flow uninterrupted, which is harder to execute cleanly in gold than it looks and is the first thing to inspect on a vintage example. Andy Warhol's association with the Polo is real collector shorthand; the house cultivated it, and a Warhol-era gold Polo carries a cultural weight beyond its gold value. A detail worth knowing: the first Polos were quartz not because Piaget could not build mechanical movements, the house was famous for ultra-thin mechanicals, but because the quartz crisis made quartz the prestige technology of the moment, and the 7P at 3.1mm and the 8P at 1.95mm were genuine records. That history is exactly why the 2024 Polo 79 revival made a point of going mechanical with the micro-rotor 1200P1, quietly correcting the one thing purists always held against the original. On the modern side, the collector conversation is almost entirely about value: the Polo S is the integrated-steel sports watch you can actually buy under retail, and for a certain buyer that is the whole appeal.