This watch is named Create the Extraordinary, and it earns the name not through any single feature but by layering together, in one object, nearly everything rare and remarkable that Audemars Piguet can offer. It is a genuine horological innovation and a piece of open-worked mechanical art and a striking combination of two very different metals and a limited edition of just thirty-nine pieces, all at once. Most watches are extraordinary, if at all, for one reason; this one is extraordinary by accumulation, each of its qualities rare on its own and almost unheard-of in combination. That is the idea the name points to, and the watch delivers on it.
Begin with the number, because thirty-nine is astonishingly small. This is one of the rarest Royal Oaks there is, a run so tiny that every owner in the world could gather around a couple of dinner tables, and that scarcity is central to what the watch is. A limited edition of thirty-nine is not a marketing gesture but a genuine grail, an object that only a few dozen people on earth will ever own, and for the collector who values true rarity above all, that alone sets it apart from almost anything else the brand makes.
The materials are where the watch first announces itself to the eye, because it is built from two metals in deliberate, visible contrast. The octagonal case and much of the bracelet are warm rose gold, glowing pink and precious, while the bezel and accents are cool grey stainless steel, technical and light and modern. Where a stealthy two-metal watch might hide its combination, this one celebrates it, the warmth of the gold set openly against the coolness of the stainless steel, precious against technical, pink against grey. That contrast runs right through the watch and plays beautifully against the exposed movement within, the warm gold of the case framing the cool grey of the mechanism, so that the whole object is a study in the meeting of two temperatures of metal.
And the movement is exposed, because this is an openworked watch, its dial removed entirely so the mechanism is laid bare to view. At its heart turns the feature that gives the model its horological significance: the Double Balance Wheel, Audemars Piguet's own innovation of two balance wheels and two hairsprings mounted on a single axis, beating together so that they average out each other's tiny errors and steady the watch's rate. Those twin hearts swing in full view at the top of the open dial, and around them the whole going train is exposed, its bridges and wheels visible, picked out in warm rose-gold tones against the grey so that the mechanism reads as a piece of sculpture as much as an engine. The openworking is not decoration for its own sake but a display of the watch's cleverest idea, the doubled balance turning where anyone can see it.
That the exposed movement is finished to the highest standard goes almost without saying, but it is worth appreciating how hard it is here. The openworked bridges are beveled and polished by hand along every edge, and the case and bracelet marry rose gold to stainless steel.
All of it lives within the design that has defined Audemars Piguet for half a century, the octagonal bezel with its eight exposed screws and the integrated bracelet flowing seamlessly from the case. Here that iconic architecture becomes the frame for an unusually concentrated display of everything the brand does best, the familiar silhouette rendered in warm gold and cool stainless steel and opened to reveal its beating twin hearts.
That is what makes this watch so special, and why its name fits. It is not extraordinary for one reason but for several stacked together: a real innovation in the Double Balance Wheel, the art of a fully openworked and hand-finished movement, a bold and beautiful pairing of rose gold and stainless steel in open contrast, and a run of just thirty-nine pieces. It gathers rarity upon rarity into a single Royal Oak, and it wears all of it with the confidence of a watch that has nothing left to prove. To own one is to own not a special watch but several kinds of special at once, in one of only thirty-nine examples in the world.
