Feature: Why are Jacob & Co. watches so expensive?

They’re the craziest, most insane, most unbelievable watches in the world—and they’re also some of the most expensive. We’ve got four here totalling almost $2m to try and answer the question: why does a Jacob & Co. cost so much?

Jacob & Co. Twin Turbo Furious

Coming in at $580,000 and 57 by 52 by 17mm, the Jacob & Co. Twin Turbo Furious isn’t exactly the kind of watch you’d chuck on for a quiet night at home on the couch. It’s more a timepiece for the kind of person whose yacht has its own helicopter, if only for getting to the other, bigger yacht.

There are a total of 832 components in this watch. 832. That’s around four times as many parts as there is in a car engine. A large sum of those parts are to found in the tourbillon. The tourbillon spins on not just one, not just two even, but three axes for full three-dimensional gravity resistance. That’s the Turbo part of this watch’s name.

Each axis rotates at a different speed, 24, 48 and 180 seconds per rotation. There’s a total of 104 parts in that entire tourbillon construction, but despite that, it only weighs a gram and a tiny bit. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, there’s two of them. That’s Twin part of the watch’s name.

But we’re far from finished. The watch packs in a chiming complication that’s not often seen. You might think it’s a plain Jane minute repeater—if such a thing exists—but here it’s a decimal repeater. That means, with a slide of the left-hand lever, instead of hours, quarters and minutes, you’ll get hours, tens and minutes instead.

Think that’s it? Not a chance. On the side of the rose gold and forged carbon fibre case is a folding crank to wind the mainspring. Massive power reserve? Nope, the indicator at the bottom only indicates up to 50 hours of power. So why so much cranking needed?

Well, for a start, it’s got a chronograph, a monopusher type. So, start, stop and reset are all controlled by the one pusher integrated into the crank. Sounds surprisingly ordinary for such an outrageous watch, and that’s because we’ve not got to the maddest part yet.

When you pull the crown out to the first position, you have the ability to set the reference time from one to five minutes. Then, thanks to a clever differential, when you record a time comparative to your reference time, the outer pit board disk will tell you whether or not your recorded time was better or worse than you reference time, and by how many seconds. Boiling eggs will never be the same again.

Jacob & Co. Astronomia Sky

If that seemed a little too cheap for you, then let’s take a look at the $680,000 Astronomia Sky instead. A very different watch to the Twin Turbo Furious, it is dominated by a 25mm thick, 47mm wide glasshouse of white gold and clear sapphire, revealing the astronomical display within.

Instead of a more traditional display like the Twin Turbo Furious, the Astronomia Sky deprioritises timekeeping for a more universal look at the passing moments, and understanding it is almost as difficult as understanding the heavenly bodies it represents.

In one corner there’s the time in seconds, rotating laterally on a cylindrical display. Go around a quarter anti-clockwise and you get the hours and minutes in a more familiar arrangement. Then there’s a representation of the moon in the form of a spherical diamond, and lastly the tourbillon. I say lastly—there’s a thingy in the centre too, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Now, the thing about the tourbillon is that, like the Twin Turbo Furious, it’s a triple axis tourbillon. You can see that the first axis is like a traditional tourbillon, the second tangentially to that—but where’s the third? The third is the whole thing, every part of that centrally mounted display, that all rotates around the middle like a complete lunatic. And that thingy in the centre? That’s a blued titanium globe with a half-sphere of tinted sapphire that spins around it to show the night and day cycles.

In case you’re wondering, yes the time always stays the right way up, even though it’s orbiting the dial once every twenty minutes. No, I have no idea how. But never mind all that, because what about the entire layer of extra complications beneath it all? Yes, the Sky edition of the Astronomia adds four more functions: the sidereal display, vertical month display—which can be read through the case side—zodiac signs and a celestial panorama.

Jacob & Co. Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon

If things got a bit too pricey for you there because you recently took ownership of a brand new Bugatti Chiron, then let me kill two birds with one stone for you with the Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon. Not only is it a very reasonable $300,000, it will also pair with your Chiron perfectly. You can even have it colour coordinated to match the paintjob.

Sat right in the centre of the watch is the showpiece complication, the solid sapphire engine block, complete with working pistons. Press the right-hand pusher and it springs into action, generating 0.001 horsepower probably.

It’s part of a 578-component movement that also includes two spinning turbos—actual turbos this time, not tourbillons like in the Twin Turbo Furious—although it does also have a tourbillon, tucked in at a jaunty angle in the nose. The 30-degree angle means the big tourbillon can fit in the tight space, much like a cooler in the real car, and the flying arrangement—as in it’s only mounted on one side—saves even more space and makes it nicely unobstructed.

As well as a power reserve indicator for the 60-hour power reserve, the movement also gets another feature, one less commonly used in watchmaking: suspension. Yes, like in a car. The movement is freely sprung in the case, capable of absorbing the impact from, say, a brisk stroll down a cobbled street or a blistering sprint along a potholed footpath.

That little piece of unnoticeable trivia posed a bit of a problem for Jacob & Co. This watch has not one but three crowns. One sets the time, the other winds the watch and the engine animation and the third activates the engine. Problem is, they’re all fixed rigidly in place and the movement has the ability to spring around thanks to its fancy suspension. So the connecting elements from the three crowns had to be universally jointed like a car driveshaft in order to make them work. Still, cheaper than an actual Chiron.

Jacob & Co. Opera Godfather

The last Jacob & Co. watch we have here splits the cost difference at a mere $348,000, but is—I think—one of the most impressive. Some might even dare call it a bargain. First and foremost, this watch is called the Opera Godfather because it is inspired by the Francis Ford Coppola film, The Godfather. But instead of making equine-based threats, it plays a little tune: the theme of The Godfather no less.

With 658 components at hand, this frankly remarkable device squeezes in two music box cylinders with 36 teeth between them to play all 120 notes of the theme within the 49mm by 20mm case. But it’s not just a feast for the ears, because there’s a whole load of visual ridiculousness happening at the same time.

Press the pusher at ten o’clock and the barrels start to do their thing, spinning and plucking the combs mounted either side. One is shaped like a grand piano, with the comb arranged to look like the keys of the piano playing during the music. Look close and you can see them move.

Also, similarly to the Astronomia, when the music plays its 30-second melody, everything inside the watch rotates by 120-degrees around the centre, rearranging the position of the entire mechanism. This includes the triple axis tourbillon, whose three axes spin at 24, 8 and 30 seconds, plus a time display, which naturally remains upright no matter what position it’s in thanks to a patented differential. This beastly complication requires beastly power, and so a violin-shaped crank on the case side unfolds to help wind it. Watching from the centre is the man himself. Don’t upset him.

Four unreal watches for four unreal prices. What do you think of Jacob & Co. and these incredible creations?