Watch Paparazzi

Entrepreneur Steven Forkosh spotted wearing Hublot

Steven Forkosh, the CEO of BLU Market and a quietly formidable watch collector, recently surfaced wearing what is arguably one of the most mechanically audacious wristwatches ever produced in a commercial edition: the Hublot MP-05 LaFerrari in full sapphire crystal, reference 905.VX.0001.RX. He owns number one of twenty — a detail that matters enormously in a world where serious collectors treat low serial numbers as a parallel currency.

The Hublot Masterpiece MP-05 LaFerrari was first unveiled in partnership with Ferrari in 2013, conceived as a horological translation of the LaFerrari hybrid hypercar's powertrain architecture. The movement — calibre HUB9005.H1.PN — stacks eleven individual tourbillon regulators in series along the vertical axis of the case, mirroring the cylinder layout of a Formula 1 engine block. Each tourbillon contributes to a combined 50-day power reserve, the longest of any manually wound tourbillon wristwatch at launch. The movement contains 637 components. Winding requires a proprietary tool that mimics an F1 wheel-gun, connecting to the crown via an electric screwdriver-style interface — a party trick that is also a genuine engineering solution to the torque demands of charging eleven cage-mounted escapements.

The reference 905.VX.0001.RX replaces the original titanium and carbon case with one machined entirely from sapphire crystal, rendering the entire mechanism visible from every angle. Sapphire cases at this scale present exceptional machining challenges — the material is second only to diamond in hardness — and the resulting piece is as much optical instrument as timepiece. The UK RRP sits at £282,000, placing it firmly in the rarefied territory occupied by independent complications from Geneva's most established names.

Forkosh is not a collector who acquires for appearances. BLU Market operates at the intersection of luxury goods and investment-grade assets, and his personal collection reflects a curator's eye rather than a brand-loyalty pattern. Owning serial number one of a 20-piece sapphire-cased tourbillon co-signed by Ferrari signals both access and deliberate choice.

On the secondary market, the MP-05 LaFerrari in sapphire trades well above retail when examples surface, which is rare. With only 20 produced globally and provenance like a number-one serial attached, grey-market pricing becomes largely academic — these pieces change hands privately, if at all. For a collector of Forkosh's calibre, it is a keeper, not a flip.