Jacob & Co. unveiled its $20 million Billionaire Timeless Treasure Yellow Diamond watch on Monday in Geneva, concurrent with the Watches & Wonders Geneva 2023 exhibition. The complex tourbillon timepiece is totally ensconced in 425 Asscher-Cut Fancy Yellow and Intense Yellow diamonds. The feat of simply collecting and cutting all of the highest color and quality of matching diamonds alone took three and a half years.
This is not the first Billionaire watch the brand has built. In fact, in 2015 it released its first Billionaire watch bedecked with 260 carats of white diamonds. Three years later, in 2018, Floyd Mayweather bought a Billionaire watch (only 21 have been made since 2015, with all of them selling except for one) for $18 million. The brand then unveiled, also in 2018, its $6 million yellow diamond Millionaire watch with 127 carats of intense yellow diamonds. But that wasn’t enough for this independently owned and operated jewelry and watch brand. Thee needed to take each of those renditions to new heights.
When it was determined that the brand would move forward with this timepiece, ten top-notch gemologists scoured the Earth for enough perfectly matched rare diamonds. In the end, the brand purchased 880 carats of rough yellow diamonds and had them cut over the course of several years into what would end up being individual Asscher-cut stones weighing 216.89 carats total. Just the studying of the rough diamonds and the cutting and polishing took thousands of hours.
The Asscher Cut, invented during the Art Deco era, is a square diamond with clipped or angled corners that offers a nice open view into the stone. The Asscher Cut diamonds on this watch boast 57 facets on the edges and the crown sits higher, so more rough stone is needed than for, say, a brilliant-cut stone. As such, there was more diamond-waste to creating the Asscher Cuts, according to the brand.
It’d take a pretty special kind of bloke to pull this one off. Even among the richest figures currently walking about on this Earth, I just can’t imagine a Bezos, Buffet, or Musk being able to wear the Jacob & Co Billionaire ASHOKA watch on their wrists without every single one of us scrunching up our faces. In any case, it’s very much real and priced at US$7 million.
Reportedly a new and improved update of Floyd Mayweather’s hella frosty 260 carat Jacob & Co Billionaire’s watch – which itself cost US$18 million – this revised iteration features over 189 carats of proprietary diamond cuts by William Goldberg. What’s so special about a William Goldberg ASHOKA diamond? As it so happens, less than 1% of all rough diamonds meet the criteria to even become an ASHOKA. In other words, what you see before you are the elite stones.
With a distinct rectangular shape highlighted by the skeletonised calibre JCAM09 tourbillon movement, this mind-numbingly opulent timepiece is comprised of 167 elements, 19 jewels, and brings a 72-hour power reserve to the table. The 19 jewels themselves have been divided into 62 individual examples to completely cover the case, bracelet, and clasp. But you didn’t need me to tell you where to look for ’em.
Naturally, an offering such as this will be ultra-exclusive. Given the rarity of ASHOKA diamonds in the world, only a single Jacob & Co Billionaire ASHOKA watch will ever be crafted.
