Introducing: The Patek Philippe 5320G, A New Perpetual Calendar Inspired By Many Historic References (Live Pics & Pricing)
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Now this one looks promising. This is the new perpetual calendar from Patek Philippe, the reference 5320G. The look is pure vintage Patek, and I mean proper vintage Patek from the 1940s and 50s. You have two apertures for the day and month, a moonphase display with date window at six o’clock, a killer, complex case, and luminous syringe hands.
Let’s extract things out a little here. The basic layout is very much 2497 / 2438. The hands? Straight off of the unique steel perpetual calendar reference 1591, though Patek tells me it was the rare luminous dial 1463 that inspired them. The case? A little bit 3449, a little bit 2405.
Ultimately, the 5320 is the combination of many great assets from many of the great Pateks from years past – but made today. The case is 40mm in diameter and available in only white gold. The dial itself is a lovely cream lacquer that feels very much period, as if it has aged a bit already.
The numerals here are applied luminous white gold arabic with additional luminous dots at each hour, to match the hands. Down at 6 o’clock you see two apertures – one providing you a day/night indication, the is a leap year indicator. This is indeed a slightly tweaked full rotor perpetual calendar mechanism for Patek – now called the caliber 324SQ – which you can see through the caseback, of course. It features 367 components and is finished to the level of the Patek Philippe seal which is to say very well finished by most standards, but lacking in great detail like one would see from someone like A. Lange & Söhne, for example.
The watch features Patek’s Gyromax® balance and Spiromax® balance spring (in Silinvar®) and the case itself is actually a mono bloc case, stamped from a single piece of gold. On some level, this was almost disappointing. The level of detail shown on the 5320 is really nice, and I wish it came at some great manual expense instead of being stamped as is – I’m not sure if that makes sense because the result is lovely either way – but I want my beautiful …read more
