The $55 Million Graff Hallucination Is Still the World's Most Expensive Quartz Watch

The Graff Hallucination was introduced at Baselworld in 2014 as the world's most expensive quartz watch, with an estimated value of $55 million. That is not a typo: this watch that you can barely see and that, ironically, will barely allow you to tell the time on it once you've spotted it costs fifty-five million dollars.

Today, one decade after it wowed and/or shocked the world at that event, it still holds that title. Apparently, the world is not filled with eccentric jewelry makers who also happen to own shares in diamond mining companies looking to flex for their peers.

Whether the Graff Hallucination watch is art or not is entirely up to whoever is looking at it or giving it any serious thought, but this is how it was imagined by Laurence Graff, the founder and CEO of Graff Diamonds. It was also imagined as a flex to fellow artisans working in high-end jewelry-making and an invitation to fellow billionaires to spend their money with Graff Diamonds.

The Graff Hallucination is also a bold exercise in jewelry watchmaking, though said boldness comes rather from the jewelry part and not actual watchmaking. It's decadent to the point of perversion, it's overwhelming, and it's outrageous. Depending on who you ask, the Graff Hallucination is also an abhorrent creation that not even Barbie would wear – and she's not even a real person, famous as she may be.

In 2014, Graff Diamonds made its debut at Baselworld, though it had been making high-end jewelry watches since 2009. It would pave the way for a long series of one-off pieces that continues to this day, including sparklers like the Diamond Secret or the Abstract Watch and the Hallucination's successor, the $40 million Graff Fascination, which was presented at Baselword 2015.

What all these pieces have in common is the desire to show off in the most literal sense. They're not created as collectibles but as pieces that showcase the craftsmanship and, ultimately, the superiority of the artisans at Graff Diamonds. It's an industry flex that just happens to include a very teeny-tiny quartz watch.

Graff would also call them a love letter because there's a limit to how far you can take self-bragging. “For many years I have thought about creating a truly remarkable watch that illustrates our all-consuming passion for diamonds," he said at the presentation. "The Hallucination has made my dream a reality."

The Hallucination presents itself like a kaleidoscope of diamonds weighing a total of 110 carats. Half of that weight comes from stones of 2 to 3 carats, so finding stones of this size was a task that took over two years. Colored diamonds are rarer and, because of it, more expensive.

A team of 30 Graff specialists, including designers, gemologists, and master craftsmen, worked on the piece for another two and a half years. The extended timeline of the project was due to the complicated design that Laurence had created, with the watch featuring several cuts for the stones (round, emerald, marquise, radiant, heart shape, and pear shape), set on a platinum bracelet.

There is no apparent symmetry or logic by which the stones are set, which probably earned the Hallucination its name. Online, this became joke fodder for passionate watch enthusiasts, who compared it to unicorn puke gathered in the form of a watch – a crass but rather apt comparison.

What offended purists the most about the Hallucination wasn't the shameless ostentatiousness of it or the waste of resources in putting it together, but the irony in calling it a watch when it's barely legible. Indeed, it would be easy to miss the small quartz watch in the center of that brilliant kaleidoscope, and not just because the bezel and dial are covered in pink diamonds.

That Graff chose to put a simple quartz mechanism on a diamond bracelet was seen as an excuse to call the Hallucination a watch so he could then bring it to Baselworld. It was also seen as a wasted opportunity in the sense that such a rare and exquisite display of diamonds would have warranted an equally dazzling display of haute horology.

But that would have taken the spotlight off the diamonds, and Graff knew it too well.

"The Graff Hallucination is a sculptural masterpiece, a celebration of the miracle of colored diamonds," he also said at the presentation. This was never about the watchmaking but about the rainbow of diamonds. That's probably why details about the mechanism of the tiny timepiece were kept under wraps until the big unveil.

The Graff Hallucination never sold, despite the media frenzy it sparked. Perhaps it was never meant to change hands, having served its purpose of showing what the artisans at Graff Diamonds were capable of doing and the kind of diamonds that they could find. It helped that Graff was – and still is – the controlling shareholder in the South African Diamond Corporation, which inspired another popular joke among watch enthusiasts: this piece is like wearing your diamond mine on your wrist.

Like with all good jokes, there's truth to it. The Graff Hallucination remains in diamond mine owner Laurence Graff's possession to this day, unless he took it apart and didn't tell anyone.