Singer J Balvin spotted wearing a Richard Mille

J Balvin has never been subtle about his passion for high horology, but his latest sighting raises the stakes considerably. The Colombian singer was spotted wearing a Richard Mille RM 057 Tourbillon Jackie Chan in rose gold — one of the most singular limited editions the Geneva-based manufacture has ever produced, and arguably one of the most labour-intensive wristwatches in existence.

The Richard Mille RM 057 was conceived as a personal tribute to actor and martial arts icon Jackie Chan, whose Chinese name carries the meaning 'the one who will become dragon.' That symbolism is rendered literally inside the watch: a hand-painted gold dragon winds through the skeletonised movement, executed by artisans working in a discipline closer to miniature sculpture than traditional watchmaking. The tourbillon calibre — a manually wound movement housed in a tonneau-shaped rose gold case — sits within Richard Mille's signature multi-layer sandwich construction, offering both structural rigidity and maximum visual transparency.

What makes the RM 057 genuinely extraordinary from a collector's standpoint is the edition structure. Only 36 examples were produced, and Richard Mille stipulated that each piece be configured differently. Variation ranges from dial treatment and dragon paintwork detail to the degree of diamond and baguette-cut stone setting — the latter pushing individual unit pricing toward the $3,000,000 ceiling. This is not a numbered edition in the conventional sense; it is, effectively, 36 unique objects that share a reference number.

J Balvin's relationship with Richard Mille is well documented. The brand has collaborated with him on dedicated pieces, and he regularly appears at Richard Mille-sponsored events. His choice to wear the RM 057 — a watch made for Jackie Chan, not for a musician — speaks to a collector's instinct rather than a brand-alignment move. He is wearing it because it is exceptional, full stop.

On the secondary market, confirmed sales of the Richard Mille RM 057 Tourbillon Jackie Chan are rare enough that grey-market pricing is difficult to establish with precision. When examples do appear at auction, results have consistently exceeded $1,000,000, with heavily set configurations achieving multiples of that figure. For a watch with a minimum list price of $750,000, the RM 057 remains one of the few Richard Mille references where retail and resale converge at genuinely stratospheric levels.