Footballer Mohamed Salah spotted wearing a Hublot

Aboard a private jet bound for Egypt and the Africa Cup of Nations, Liverpool and Egypt forward Mohamed Salah was caught on camera pointing to his wrist — and what a wrist it is. The watch drawing attention is the Hublot Big Bang Unico Sapphire, reference 411.JX.4802.RT, a 500-piece limited edition that represents one of the most labour-intensive case constructions in contemporary watchmaking.

The 45mm case is machined entirely from synthetic sapphire crystal — a material with a Vickers hardness of roughly 2,000 HV, second only to diamond. Each case requires diamond-tipped CNC tooling and extensive hand-finishing to achieve the requisite optical clarity, making production inherently slow and costly. The result is a fully transparent shell that exposes the skeletonised HUB1242 calibre: an in-house, COSC-adjacent automatic movement beating at 28,800 vph, offering 72 hours of power reserve and a column-wheel flyback chronograph complication — all visible through the sapphire dial, case and caseback simultaneously.

The Big Bang Unico Sapphire debuted at Baselworld 2016 and immediately attracted collector attention for pushing sapphire case-making beyond the small, delicate pieces previously attempted by independents. Hublot's industrial capacity allowed a 45mm sports-chronograph format, which was genuinely unprecedented at that scale. The white rubber strap with transparent deployant clasp maintains the monochromatic, ghost-like aesthetic that defines the reference.

Salah has demonstrated consistent preference for high-complication, visually dramatic pieces — befitting an athlete whose on-pitch performances carry the same quality of spectacle. Travelling to represent his national side at AFCON, he chose a watch that is simultaneously a feat of engineering and an unambiguous statement piece, which aligns with his public persona both on and off the pitch.

On the market, the 411.JX.4802.RT carries an official retail price of approximately $69,000 USD. Given its limited production of 500 examples and sustained demand from collectors seeking skeleton chronographs with genuine technical differentiation, grey-market values have tracked at or slightly above retail, making this one of the few Hublot references that holds its value with relative stability in the secondary market.