RM 001 Tourbillon

Everything that Richard Mille became is already present in the RM 001: the three-part tonneau case, the visible chassis, the free-sprung tourbillon hung in the middle of nothing, and the refusal to put a dial between the owner and the mechanism.

It launched in 2001 in a production run counted in the teens, at a price that seemed absurd for a new name and now reads as a bargain. Collectors did not understand it immediately. Then, within a few years, it defined a category.

The baseplate carries a torque indicator and a power-reserve display — instrumentation borrowed from motorsport telemetry rather than watchmaking convention. The tourbillon cage is finished to a level the openworked architecture leaves nowhere to conceal.

This example came to us with its original documentation and service history intact, which for a first-series RM is close to unheard of.

It has been sold. It remains in the archive because the reference matters, and because the photography does.