Story: Daniel Komar

Pictures: Desmond Teo

In 1991, Robert Casagrande, a wealthy Swiss souvenir shop owner and a small team of Swatch enthusiasts established the first International Auction for Swatch. He wanted more than a simple auction, more like a multi-day event complete with organised dinner, traders bourse and of course a quite glamorous auction with many rare Swatches and also plenty of unusual prototypes. Additionally, his team decided to devise a multi-year theme to go along with the specially created event "Timepiece" that they would create each year. They never really told anyone about this theme until it became evident in the third year.

The first watch was called the Big Flat. The concept of "Fire" was to take actual Swatch dummies and smoosh them under pressure and heat to create a unique looking piece of art. This was a Klaus Zaugg idea, another big collector, artist and photographer, and very close friend of Robert Casagrande. So... with concept in hand, they devised a method, still unknown to me, to smoosh the watch in just such a way as to create a unique look, then mount it with a magnet onto a signed plinth (black acrylic board base). Each plinth was signed and numbered by the creator Klaus Zaugg. Robert Casagrande has a Bonaparte Big Flat given to him by Klaus Zaugg. Bellow a Snow White Big Flat (436/444).

For the 2nd auction the theme chosen was "Earth". It was the Sand watch and they got Franco Bossisio, then boss of Swatch Italia, to create for them casings that had no middle section. It was not used a Swatch casing, but another plastic watch similar to Swatch and also made by SMH. They also had very tiny sand clocks made in different colours of sand. The main colour was white. Lesser quantities of red, green, yellow and blue were made, with blue being the rarest. At the very end of the run, they decided to make a very select few with actual gold pellets. 25 were believed to be made. Robert and Klaus gave these to special people they knew.

The 3rd year watch was the last one designed in total by Klaus. It was the Wind watch. Once again they used an open casing, this time of special colour, and included pinwheels that rotated in opposite directions. These too were in special colours and were sold in sets as well as individual pieces. Additionally some few odd (prototype) colorations were made of around 25 total pieces.

The 4th and final year of the Luzern auction saw the completion of the 4-year series with Water swatchs. This was created in Memorial to Klaus Zaugg who had tragically died as the result of a minor gunshot wound to his leg in a robbery attempt, then died as a result of the medications given to him at the hospital. The concept had been Klaus', but the implementation was finalised by Robert Casagrande. Robert had been in a lawsuit that entire year brought on by Swatch over his Sand watch from the 2nd year, as part of the terms of settlement, Robert had to agree that after the 94 auction he would have no more auctions and don't make no more non-swatch swatches. It was pretty much the end of the major Swatch era in Switzerland and brought with it the loss of interest from many collectors and especially those in Switzerland. Prices also started to drop and no other auctioneers were interested in doing any more low-end actions, save the one last-ditch effort by Rudolf Mangish in Zurich…