Entrepreneur Jean-Claude Biver spotted wearing a Blancpain

Jean-Claude Biver built modern Blancpain from a single sentence — 'Since 1735, there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. There never will be.' Seeing him wear a Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeater is therefore not a celebrity endorsement; it is primary-source history.

The watch in question belongs to the Villeret Ultra-Slim Minute Repeater family, characterised by its clean, stepped bezel, white grand-feu enamel or lacquer dial, applied Roman numerals, Breguet-style blued-steel hands and a small-seconds subdial at six o'clock. The case — here in polished white gold measuring approximately 38 mm — sits exceptionally flat on the wrist, a direct result of Blancpain's in-house Calibre 362, a manually wound movement measuring just 3.95 mm in height. The repeater mechanism strikes the hours, quarter-hours and minutes on two cathedral gongs via a slide on the caseback, delivering Blancpain's celebrated clear, bell-like acoustic signature. Power reserve stands at approximately 96 hours.

The Villeret Minute Repeater holds a particular place in the post-quartz-crisis canon. Blancpain reintroduced minute repeaters to serial production when the complication was considered commercially suicidal; that gamble established the brand's identity as a pure haute-horlogerie manufacture and set the template that Richemont and LVMH rivals would eventually follow. Every Villeret repeater produced since inherits that founding conviction.

For Biver — the man who later rebuilt Hublot and ran TAG Heuer — this is precisely the kind of watch that needs no introduction in a boardroom or at SIHH. Its restraint communicates mastery to those who know, while remaining invisible to those who do not, which has always been the Villeret philosophy.

On the secondary market, Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeaters in white gold trade firmly above retail. Collector demand for acoustically excellent, ultra-thin repeaters has strengthened considerably since 2020, with clean examples achieving between $45,000 and $65,000 at auction depending on service history and dial condition. Official retail for current references sits in the $58,000–$65,000 range, placing this firmly in serious collector territory.