Auction Highlights: December 5, 2023 Cambi d'Aste

Dedicated Short Post for Cambi d'Aste Dec 5 Watches Auction 878

Dec 02, 2023

Cambi d’Aste was established in Genoa, Italy in 1998 and are now located in Genoa's Mackenzie Castle. Initially focused on Ancient Art, they now encompass many areas, including luxury items. In 2013, they became Italy's top auction house by turnover. Watches, however, are relatively new for Cambi D’Aste, having started only in 2015. Lot descriptions are quite “hands-off”, so be sure to ask many questions. I like the quality of their high-resolution frontal photos, but usually you need to ask for additional photos of movement, etc.

Below I’ve selected 12 lots from their Dec. 5 Watches Auction 878 that are within the strike zone of this Substack and may be of interest to subscribers. However, many of the lots have high reserve prices so I am not assigning auction highlight numbers and commentary will be extremely brief. For your convenience, the commentary is hyperlinked to the lot detail pages, where you can see details of each lot.

You can also view the whole catalogue here.

In regular auction highlights post, I select auction listings from public, non-branded online auctions based on condition, a low starting price and a low estimate of <$25,000. For established but non-branded auction houses (such as Cambi D’Aste but not Christie’s, Phillips, Monaco Legend, etc.) that organize a watch-themed auction and where the lot reserve prices are high or at market, I do a brief “dedicated” post without auction highlights numbers. I did one for Aste Bolaffi on Nov 8, 2023 and Heritage Auctions on Nov 13, 2023.

Please note that even for these shorter “dedicated” auction posts, I review the whole catalogue and scrutinize all the pictures, so it does take me quite a while even though the commentary is brief. If I haven’t included a lot you were interested in, it could be because I felt it did not fit in this Substack’s strikezone, and/or there were issues with authenticity, originality, and/or condition. Feel free to reach out and ask me why. Note that auction season is in full swing, I am overwhelmed so please forgive brevity and errors.

This Substack is currently a free service and so I publish posts after auctions are closed. However this post is an exception.

IMPORTANT NOTE: AS OF THIS WRITING CAMBI D’ASTE STILL HAS NOT REPLIED TO REQUESTS FOR MORE INFO AND PHOTOS. I WILL UPDATE THIS POST ACCORDINGLY, BUT SUBSTACK WILL NOT NOTIFY YOU OF THE UPDATES, SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN A LOT PLEASE CHECK BACK.