Panerai
Panerai holds 978 watches in this library, in eleven collections and on 122 movements, every one of them mechanical. The median case is 44 mm, 40 per cent are rated to 300 m or more, and 42 per cent are limited editions, each the highest share of any brand here.
Collections
Pre-Vendome
Clocks & Instruments
Mare Nostrum
Pocket Watches
Luminor 1950
The Luminor 1950 is the Panerai case derived from the 1950 prototype, thicker and more curved than the standard Luminor.
Luminor
The Luminor is the Panerai case with the crown-protecting bridge, a lever patented in 1956 that clamps the crown against the case.
Radiomir
The Radiomir is the original Panerai, a cushion case with wire lugs made from 1936 for the Italian Navy's frogmen.
Submersible
The Submersible is Panerai's dive watch, the Luminor case with a rotating bezel, made a collection of its own in 2019.
Radiomir 1940
The Radiomir 1940 is the Radiomir with lugs machined from the case block rather than wire lugs welded on.
Luminor Due
The Luminor Due is the thin Luminor: the crown-protecting bridge and cushion case at around 10.5 mm, launched in 2016 as a Panerai that fits under a cuff.
Ferrari
Ferrari Engineered by Officine Panerai was a licensed line of 2005 to 2010, round-cased watches with the prancing horse.
About Panerai
Giovanni Panerai opened a watchmaker's shop in Florence in 1860 that became a supplier of instruments to the Italian navy. Its two patents were luminous compounds: Radiomir, a radium paste of 1916, and Luminor, a tritium-based one of 1949, and both names became watches. The Radiomir of 1936, a 47 mm cushion case with wire lugs, was made for the navy's frogmen with Rolex-supplied cases and movements; the Luminor of 1950 added the crown-protecting bridge that is still the brand's signature. Panerai sold no watches to the public until 1993, and the Vendôme group, now Richemont, bought it in 1997 and relaunched it; the manufacture in Neuchâtel followed in 2002 and its first in-house movement, the eight-day P.2002, in 2005.
The Luminor, 275 watches, and the Luminor 1950, 234, whose case reproduces the 1950 shape, are more than half the catalogue. The Radiomir is 178 and the Radiomir 1940 54; the Submersible, the diver with a rotating bezel, is 122 and reaches 2,500 m; the Luminor Due of 2016 is the thinner version at 63; and the Ferrari watches of 2006 to 2010 add 27.
The movements span the brand's two eras. The OP calibers are the bought-in ones: the hand-wound OP II on 66 watches is a Unitas 6497, the pocket-watch movement the Unitas piece explains made the 44 mm case possible, and the OP III and OP XII are automatics on Valjoux bases. The P calibers are in-house: the three-day P.9010 and its slimmer successor the P.900, the most common caliber here at 91 watches; the ten-day P.2003 GMT; the hand-wound three-day P.3000 and eight-day P.5000; and the P.9100 flyback chronograph. Sixty-six per cent of the catalogue is automatic and 34 per cent hand-wound.
Steel is 62 per cent of the cases, titanium 107 watches and gold 16 per cent, with Carbotech and ceramic beyond them; 44 mm accounts for 442 watches and 47 mm for 177. A second time zone is the characteristic complication, 17 per cent of the watches, and chronographs are rare at 2 per cent. The rarity median is 5, 23 per cent of the scored watches sit at 8 or above, and 40 per cent have a display back.