Hand Made 1
Greubel Forsey’s most-hand-made watch: announced 2019 and delivered 2020 onwards, the Hand Made 1 is approximately 95% hand-made including the hairspring, the balance, and the case-finishing. Production is a handful of watches per year. The Hand Made 1 is the brand’s most direct statement about what fully-hand-built watchmaking looks like in the contemporary era.
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The Hand Made 1 is Greubel Forsey's philosophical manifesto: every component is fabricated using only 18th-century hand tools, with no CNC machining or industrial processes. It takes approximately 6,000 hours to complete one watch. The piece is as much an argument about craft as a timekeeping instrument, and production is measured in single digits per year.
- 1Open
Hand Made 1: every part made by hand using 18th-century tools only, ~6,000 hours per piece, single-digit annual production.
- The case for it:
- The Hand Made 1 is not a watch to compare against other watches on specification. It is the most radical statement in contemporary watchmaking about what craft means without industrialization. If you are a collector who buys on philosophical significance rather than market positioning, nothing made today makes this argument as completely.
- Consider instead if:
- The Hand Made 1 is illiquid, extremely expensive, and not meaningfully a better time instrument than a $200 quartz. It is art that happens to keep time. Buy it for that reason, not any other.
Rankings last reviewed 2026-06-18. Editorial perspective only. Not financial advice.