Thoughts On The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar ‘John Mayer’ Limited Edition
The retirement of a classic ultra-thin complicated movement makes for a beautiful sunset.
In 1967, the Audemars Piguet caliber 2120 was introduced as the world’s thinnest full-rotor automatic movement. Manufactured by Jaeger-LeCoultre as the caliber 920, and at its outset a collaboration between JLC, Vacheron, and AP, it was used by all three of the Holy Trinity manufacturers – by Patek, in the Nautilus; by Vacheron, in the 222; and by Audemars Piguet, in the Royal Oak Jumbo, as the 2121 (base caliber 2120, but with non-quickset date). AP used the 2120 elsewhere as well – it’s the base movement for the Jules Audemars Equation Of Time (AKA The Watch I Most Wish AP Would Put Back In The Catalog) and it has been, since 1978, the base caliber for automatic perpetual calendars as well. First launched as the caliber 2120/2800, the movement was first used in the ref. 5548, a round, 36mm dress watch, and it was first used in a Royal Oak case in 1984, in the famous Royal Oak ref. 5554.
The movement still exists today in the current Audemars Piguet collection as the cal. 5134, which is essentially the 2120/2800, but with a somewhat idiosyncratic day of the week indication. The 5134 debuted in 2015, with a slight increase in movement thickness (the 5134 is 4.31mm thick vs. 3.95mm thick for the 2120/2800, and 2.45mm thick for the base caliber 2120). The current Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar models using the cal. 5134 are still remarkably thin; and at 41mm x 9.5mm the proportions really emphasize the roots of the complication in classic, mid-century ultra-thin watchmaking.
The John Mayer Perpetual Calendar was originally conceived as a unique piece, but reportedly, Mayer – who is not only a long-time client of AP, but also well known in the watch collector community as an obsessively serious enthusiast himself – agreed to a proposal from former CEO François-Henry Bennahmias to make the watch as a limited edition. The JM QP has exactly the same physical dimensions as the standard-issue RO perpetuals and also uses the cal. 5134 – but with a major caveat. At the same time that AP announced the JM Perpetual Limited Edition, it also announced that this is the last time that the 5134 will be offered in a limited edition. This seems to be part of a larger strategy to sunset the 2120 overall, as it was already replaced in the Jumbo, for the 50th Anniversary of the Royal Oak in 2022, with the caliber 7121.
The 2120 is today, still the thinnest full-rotor automatic movement ever made (thinner micro-rotor and hand-wound movements exist but the 2120 remains the thinnest with a full-sized, non-peripheral rotor). This is an astonishing feat for a movement which has been around since the late 1960’s and the whole movement was built from the ground up with slimness as a priority.
It is generally agreed by enthusiasts that all other things being equal, a hand-wound movement is more beautiful than an automatic; the rotor and automatic winding system tend to obscure the view of the plates and bridges, and hand-wound movements have a clarity to their layout which is often obscured by the addition of a rotor and automatic winding system. The caliber 2120 and its variants are a dramatic exception to that rule. The 2120 and in this case, the 5134 are about as beautiful as it gets when it comes to automatic movements. Finish is first class throughout, and the design of the rotor actually adds to the aesthetic appeal of the caliber. Notably, the rotor consists of a central weight set onto a peripheral ring, which rides on four ruby rollers set into the movement plate, which is essential to the caliber’s slim dimensions.
As is usually the case with perpetual calendars, the calendar works are under the dial and, unless the model is an open-dial variant (of which there are a handful in the catalog, including the recent Cactus Jack release) you generally don’t get to either admire the complication in action or admire the finish. The perpetual calendar works for AP are made by Dubois-Depraz and represent, as does the base caliber, classic complicated watchmaking at its best, although the 5134 is no longer technically the thinnest perpetual calendar movement in AP’s repertoire. That honor goes to the caliber 5133, in the Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar Ultra Thin, which is just 2.89mm thick, mainly thanks to a completely new perpetual calendar system set into a recess milled into the movement plate.
A huge part of the appeal for Mayer, and for AP collectors, is the dial. Reminiscent of the rare hand-hammered “Tuscan” dials found on some Royal Oak perpetuals, it’s made by stamping a dial blank with a die whose complex surface was created by electroforming, which is an electrochemical process in which a metal surface is “grown” by the deposition of metal atoms onto a substrate. The resolution can be almost arbitrarily fine and the result is a dial that seems to be made of shards of naturally occurring mineral crystals – with a very deep blue PVD coating echoed by the aventurine star field surrounding the laser etched moon.
One very nice touch is how the number 31 was handled on the date indication. Normally this number feels pretty cramped in conventional perpetual calendar day subdials – the distance between two dates is the same whether it’s between one and two or 31 and one, so you end up having to crowd two digits together once you hit the tenth, and the extra width of a 2 or 3 means that by the time you get to the end of the month the dial can start to feel claustrophobic. Mayer’s solution was to vertically stagger two smaller digits for the 31st, which not only gives the date indication better symmetry and some much needed breathing room, but also makes the 31st visually distinct.
It’s a fantastic watch and, what with the gorgeous, historically important movement, complication plate, and base caliber, plus a Tuscan-style dial that actually looks a heck of a lot better than actual Tuscan dials, plus the connection with Mayer – who is about as authentic as it gets when it comes to celebrity brand ambassadors, and it shows in the little details in his limited edition – you have an extremely desirable watch which is also being produced in just large enough numbers to be meaningful to serious AP collectors, but not so large as to dilute the exclusivity of the model.
Now, for me the $64,000 question is, what does this actually mean for the future of the cal. 2120, and its use as a foundation for complications at Audemars Piguet? AP is the only company still using the movement in any quanity– it took over manufacturing from Jaeger in the early 2000s (up until then, per AP, JLC supplied movement blanks to them) and while Vacheron used to use it in the Les Historiques Ultra Fine 1968, as well as the Overseas Ultra-Thin (both discontinued) it also has restricted its use of its version of the 2120, the 1120, to use as a base caliber, in small numbers, in perpetual calendars.
I’m as ready as any movement retro-nostalgist to mourn the passing of one of the great Swiss automatic calibers of all time but I also wonder if pouring one out for the 2120 might not be ever so slightly premature. For one thing, the language of AP’s press release is highly specific; it says the JM Perpetual LE is ” … the last limited edition equipped with the selfwinding perpetual calendar movement, Calibre 5134.”
It doesn’t say that AP is sunsetting the movement entirely and it definitely doesn’t say that AP is retiring the 2120 in every configuration, although saying that it’ll never offer it again in an LE is already pretty strong. Still, I would be pleased as anything if the 2120 were to keep on ticking in some form. And in fact, it is present as the base caliber in the ultra-thin perpetual calendar cal. 5133.
This is the caliber 5133, top plate (above) and perpetual calendar mechanism (below).
Above are the top plate and dial side of the caliber 5133. As you can see, the base caliber is without question the 2120. Now this is a fairly new movement; it was introduced in the RO Perpetual Ultra-Thin in 2019 after an earlier launch as RD#2, in 2018, and is currently in the catalogue in titanium, as a 200 piece limited edition. The compression of the perpetual calendar works is extreme; as you can see, the entire system has been flattened into a single layer, which is set into a recess in the plate that thins the mainplate out so much you can see the ruby rollers for the automatic winding system peeking through (this is true of the dial side of the base caliber 2120 taken alone, but the rollers are hidden in the 2120/2800 and its variants). The watch is billed as a 200 piece LE, price on request, and it does make me just wonder what if anything AP might have in mind for this version of the complication – it was designed around the 2120 (quite literally) and while there is no sign from AP that any new version of either the movement or the reference is in the offing, there isn’t any sign that there isn’t either.
In the meantime, though, I have to congratulate AP and John Mayer on the limited edition – speculation on the future aside this is one of the most enthusiast-centric AP limited editions I’ve seen lately. Highly desirable, not impossibly inaccessible (adjusted for realistic expectations based on your budget and your relationship to AP) and a piece of history to boot, it’s a fitting victory lap for one of the most important perpetual calendar movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.