Richard Mille RM 63-01 Calibre CRMA3 Automatic Winding Dizzy Hands

The Richard Mille RM 63-01 Dizzy Hands is a watch built around a joke about time, and it takes extraordinary engineering to tell it. Press the pusher set into the centre of the crown and the sapphire dial begins to rotate slowly anti-clockwise while the hour hand travels clockwise, each at a different speed, so the watch stops telling the time entirely and becomes a slow-motion ballet on the wrist. Press it again and everything returns instantly to the correct time, as though nothing happened.

Richard Mille took the idea from a line of Gérard de Nerval's poetry, that the wise man laughs at time because only he knows how to use it. Delivering it required an entirely new movement, the in-house Calibre CRMA3, developed at Les Breuleux, which borrows architecture from chronograph design: a column wheel at 1 o'clock drives the rotation, and a hammer at 3 o'clock triggers the reset, with the hour and minute functions fully separated from one another.

The movement is built on a skeletonised grade 5 titanium baseplate with titanium bridges, PVD-treated, wound by a bidirectional rotor, with around 50 hours of power reserve. The case measures 42.7 by 11.7mm, assembled the way every Richard Mille is, with spline screws and abrasion-resistant washers, and it is water resistant to 30 metres. At Konesseur, every Richard Mille is authenticated and inspected in Dubai before listing, and the UAE's 5% VAT is a meaningful advantage at this level. See more Richard Mille or the full watches range to compare.

• Reference and model: Richard Mille RM 63-01 Automatic Winding Dizzy Hands, 42.7 x 11.7mm (confirm case material against the watch)
• Complication: Dizzy Hands, a crown pusher sets the sapphire dial rotating anti-clockwise and the hour hand clockwise at different speeds, suspending timekeeping until pressed again, when it resets to the correct time
• Movement: in-house automatic Calibre CRMA3, grade 5 titanium baseplate and bridges, bidirectional rotor, ~50h power reserve, 35 jewels, 28,800 vph, 30m water resistance
• Condition and authenticity: authenticated by Konesseur (confirm condition, box and papers against the listing)