A Cartier Cheich has become the most expensive Cartier wristwatch ever sold at auction. The more interesting part of the story is that the watch was never conceived as a commercial model in the first place.
Sold by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong for HK$26.52 million, around US$3.4 million, the unique white-gold Cheich was made in 2010 for the collector Giorgio Seragnoli. It is one of only five known examples of one of Cartier’s least conventional designs.
The result gives the Cartier Cheich history a new chapter, but its origins lie almost three decades earlier in the Paris-Dakar Rally, where Cartier created a trophy that could only be earned through an exceptional sporting achievement.
A Cartier record in Hong Kong
The 2010 Cheich sold at Sotheby’s Important Watches auction in Hong Kong after a prolonged bidding contest. At HK$26.52 million, it surpassed the previous auction record for a Cartier wristwatch, which had been set earlier in 2026 by a London Crash.
Sotheby’s catalogued the watch as a unique 18ct white-gold Cheich measuring 38mm by 27mm, with a white dial, brown Cartier leather strap, white-gold folding clasp and a jewelled quartz movement. The case is marked No. 1, 3316AF and 62020C.
Those markings are useful identification points, but they should not automatically be treated as a conventional commercial Cartier reference. The Cheich sits outside Cartier’s normal production structure, which is precisely why it needs a different treatment in our Cartier Reference & Size Finder.
Cartier Cheich history begins with the Dakar
The Paris-Dakar Rally grew from an experience that nearly ended badly. In 1977, French motorcyclist Thierry Sabine became lost in the Libyan desert during the Abidjan-Nice Rally. The experience inspired him to create a new event that crossed North Africa and finished in Dakar.
The first rally left Paris in December 1978. The event quickly developed a reputation for combining competition with navigation, mechanical endurance and physical survival over vast distances. The Dakar’s own historical archive still traces its identity back to Sabine’s original idea of a challenge for those taking part and a spectacle for those watching.
Cartier entered that world in the early 1980s. One of the most difficult sections across the Ténéré desert was named the Raid Santos of Cartier, linking the rally with Alberto Santos-Dumont and Cartier’s long-standing Santos story.
The connection may seem unusual now, but it suited Cartier’s broader interest in design, travel and technically demanding environments. For collectors interested in that parallel branch of Cartier history, our Cartier Santos Reference Guide covers the family that supplied the name.
The Cartier Challenge
In 1983, Cartier president Alain-Dominique Perrin and Thierry Sabine created the Cartier Challenge. The rules were deliberately severe. A competitor had to win the Paris-Dakar in the same category in two consecutive years.
Rather than present the winner with a conventional cup, Cartier designed a wristwatch specifically for the achievement. Jacques Diltoer, Cartier’s creative director, worked with Perrin on a case inspired by the wrapped head covering associated with the Tuareg people of the Sahara and reflected in the rally’s visual identity.
The resulting watch was called the Cheich. Its case does not simply surround the dial. The folds appear to wrap around it, turning the case itself into the trophy. The original versions used Cartier’s three-colour gold treatment, with yellow, pink and white gold contributing to the layered form.
This is one reason the Cheich is difficult to compare with almost anything else Cartier has made. It is not simply an unusual case shape such as a Crash, Pebble or Cloche. The shape carries the meaning of the competition for which it was created.
Gaston Rahier and the only Cheich ever won
The challenge did eventually produce a winner. Belgian rider Gaston Rahier won the motorcycle category of the Paris-Dakar in 1984 and repeated the victory in 1985 on BMW machinery.
That second consecutive win made Rahier the only competitor ever to earn a Cartier Cheich under the original rules. His trophy watch was approximately 38mm by 24mm and used the manually wound FE 664 calibre. The case number recorded by Sotheby’s is 226’291.
Rahier’s watch remained with his family for decades. When Sotheby’s offered it in Paris in 2022, it sold for €1,003,000, already placing the Cheich among the most valuable and historically important Cartier wristwatches to appear publicly.
Why there are only five known examples
Four Cheich watches were produced during the original period. The first pair were made when the Cartier Challenge was launched in 1983, one for a male winner and a smaller diamond-set version for a female winner.
A further example was made for Thierry Sabine, while another men’s watch was prepared after Rahier received the original trophy so that a future winner could still be awarded one.
The challenge did not continue long enough for that to happen. Sabine was killed in a helicopter accident during the 1986 Dakar. The Cartier Challenge ended, leaving Rahier as its only recipient.
Of those four original watches, two remain in the Cartier Collection. Rahier’s example entered a private collection after the 2022 Sotheby’s sale. The watch associated with Sabine is currently unaccounted for.
For years that appeared to be the complete story. Then a fifth Cheich emerged.
The 2010 white-gold commission
Giorgio Seragnoli was not an ordinary Cartier client. He co-authored Cartier Bianco, a book devoted to Cartier in white metals, and assembled a collection centred on platinum and white-gold watches.
In 2010, Cartier agreed to make a white-gold Cheich for him as a special commission. The result retained the sculptural language of the Dakar trophy but translated it into a monochrome precious-metal case.
The watch was not widely known until it surfaced publicly years later. By the time it reached Sotheby’s in 2026, its combination of rarity, documented origin and singular execution placed it in a category closer to an object of Cartier history than a conventional production watch.
The fact that it uses a quartz movement makes the result more revealing rather than less. At this level of Cartier collecting, mechanical complexity is only one measure of importance. Design, provenance, scarcity and the circumstances of manufacture can matter more.
Why the Cheich matters to Cartier collectors
The auction record does not mean every rare Cartier has suddenly become a multi-million-dollar object, nor does one result provide a reliable pricing guide for the wider market.
What it does show is how the upper end of Cartier collecting can differ from traditional watch collecting. A technically simple watch can command an exceptional price when its design occupies a unique place in the history of the Maison.
That helps explain why watches such as the Crash, Pebble, early Cintrée and unusual special commissions attract serious attention. Their significance is often rooted in proportion, form and production history rather than a complication count.
The Cheich takes that principle unusually far because the watch was not intended for retail at all. In its original form it had to be won, and the sporting requirement was so demanding that only one person ever managed it.
How we are recording the Cheich in the Cartier Reference Finder
The Cheich will be listed in the Watch & Bullion Cartier Reference Finder as a special commission and trophy-watch family rather than being forced into a conventional commercial-reference structure.
The original Rahier trophy will be recorded with its documented case number 226’291, approximately 38mm by 24mm dimensions and manually wound FE 664 calibre. The 2010 white-gold watch will be listed separately at 38mm by 27mm with its quartz movement and documented case markings No. 1, 3316AF and 62020C.
That distinction matters. A reference database should make unusual watches easier to understand, not create false certainty by converting every number on a case into a model reference.
From an almost impossible trophy to an auction record
The Cartier Cheich history works because the object and the story are inseparable. Its sculpted case came directly from the world for which it was designed, and its scarcity resulted from the difficulty of the challenge rather than an artificial production limit.
Rahier’s watch remains the purest expression of that idea because he actually earned it. The 2010 white-gold commission adds a different layer, showing how an important collector persuaded Cartier to revisit a design that had effectively disappeared.
At HK$26.52 million, the 2026 auction result gives the Cheich a new statistical distinction. The stronger reason to remember it is still the same one that made the watch interesting before the bidding began: Cartier once created a wristwatch that could only be obtained by winning the Paris-Dakar twice in succession.
Sources and further reading
Primary specifications and the production history of the 2010 watch are available in the Sotheby’s 2026 catalogue. The earlier trophy watch is documented in the 2022 Gaston Rahier auction catalogue. The Dakar historical archive provides the wider history of Thierry Sabine and the rally.
For another Cartier model whose modern identity mixes documented history with long-repeated legend, see our Cartier Pasha history, or continue into the Cartier Reference & Size Finder.
