Watch It: Aurel Bacs Profiled By CBS Sunday Morning With Phillips 'Decade One' Sale Less Than A Week Away

Few names in the watch auction world carry the same weight as Aurel Bacs. In a new profile from our friends at CBS News that ran during today’s edition of CBS Sunday Morning (and can be streamed below), the world’s most recognizable watch auctioneer opens up about his lifelong passion for watches, his path from a middle-class childhood in Switzerland to the rostrum at Phillips, and the philosophy that’s guided a career defined by taste, expertise, and record-setting results.

Bacs describes falling in love with watches at just eleven or twelve years old, an early fascination that eventually led him into the auction world through Sotheby’s, and later to Phillips, where his instinct for storytelling and provenance helped transform how the world values mechanical watches. He also discusses what it was like to set the 2017 record for a wristwatch with Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona 6263, which sold for $17.75 million. 

The video profile also includes an appearance from our own Ben Clymer, chatting with CBS’s Mark Strassmann about how auctions match two people in a competition to see what a watch could be worth. With Phillips, along with Bacs & Russo, offering a steel Patek Philippe 1518 in next weekend’s “Decade One” sale in Geneva, it’s definitely possible that we’ll see a record or two broken in the coming days. To dig deeper into the sale, be sure to check out Mark’s preview here. 

In closing the roughly 5-minute profile, Bacs asserts that he’s always looking for the next grail and that “there will be a 50 million dollar watch”. Who knows, perhaps we’ll see that watch as soon as next weekend.

Click here for the full presentation from CBS News.