The 5056P was voted as TimeZone's Patek of the Decade in 2004 - and is still wonderful. Just got this one a few weeks ago, and it has been an absolute delight. The play of light on the dial and applied romans is enchanting. The 37mm diameter seems just right. The heft of the platinum is quite pleasing. The applied roman numerals sparkle in the light. The gray strap perfectly complements the watch. Even the IV vs IIII and radial flip of the roman numerals add to the charm.
Sometimes the dial even appears to be fairly flat.
But that's just an illusion! Also, in the picture below you can see the tiny diamond (0.02 carats) winking in the case between the lugs at 6. The practice of putting a tiny diamond there in platinum cased watches started around the time that the 5056P came out in 1998 or so. This is really only noticeable by the wearer, and makes it look like the watch is winking at you in a friendly manner. This is a contentious issue for some people, but I like it. 4 milligrams of diamond.
The dial is endlessly fascinating...
One thing that was not so evident on the wrist, but jumps out when looking at a dial the size of the monitor is that the JUL on the months subdial is not perfectly centered.
It almost looks like there is room for the Y of JULY. Last minute design change? An "oops" moment?
This seemed a bit odd for Patek Philippe, so I did some digging online - reading through all the posts on the 5056P on TZ and some other fora, Antiquorum, Google image search, etc., comparing dials on the 5035 (original annual calendar reference w/o moonphase), 5036 (annual calendar on bracelets with moonphase), and 5146 (current annual calendar with subdials). Interestingly, Walt Odet's TZ article on the Patek Annual Calendar function is illustrated with several dials that show this same off-center JUL. There are many other examples of the 5035 and 5056 references with off center JULs. I didn't find any examples of the 5146 with off centered JULs. Unfortunately, I can not be sure about the 5036... I found some on the Antiquorum site, some of which might have the off centered JUL, but the hands are arranged at 8:18, which obscures the bottom of the months subdial. Some appear to be off center, but can't really tell for sure.
There are also examples of the 5035 with the JUL centered, as well as 5036 with the JUL centered (Bluesman, and Mike Woods' post has a family of three!), and 5056P (scroll down to Mr.K's post) with centered JUL. I also contacted a number of people who had posted pictures, trying to get an idea of when their watches were made, to see if there was a correlation between year of production and the centered or off centered JUL. I had the impression that the original production masters had the JUL off-center; this was changed (I won't say corrected!) sometime during the production to a centered JUL. Perhaps this is why there do not seem to be any 5146s with the off center JUL. But not finding any off center 5036s, which were available in the late 90s, tends to confuse the issue. However, as Nicolas Nassim Taleb (author of Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, and Infragility) would tell us, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Or absinthe...
It seems odd that there was no discussion about this on TZ, although the accessible online archives only go back to 2005 or 2006. Perhaps this was a hot topic back in the 1990s.
One thing that was discussed and commented on is the fact the that engraving on the movement plates is not consistent throughout the production runs. Jeff Kingston commented about this on another forum in 2005:
"I have inquired directly about this at the factory. There is no rhyme or reason to the engraving. Sometimes PP does it; sometimes not. I used to think it was only the older plates which had the notation about ajustments and heat and cold etc., but some newer ones have it also. So confused I asked a couple of watch makers in the PP complication room. Their answer: sometimes the parts are engraved and sometimes they are not. How's that for an easy to understand practice or policy? So I am content with my watches that have it and those that do not."
I'll post pictures of the movement once I can bear to let the movement stop. This uses a 315 series movement, which has some noticeable differences in appearance to the 324 in current annuals.
Back to watch at hand (wrist)...
This is my first watch with a power reserve, and it is a delightful complication. I had thought it was superfluous (although a moonphase is clearly not...), but it adds interest to the dial, especially with the dots of red color. Also fun to watch the PR increase during the day.
Safe to say, this is my Number One watch, for right now anyway.
Although it does fall short in one area: the lume. My watch was made no later than 1999, so it is at least 13 years old. The lume in the beautifully shaped hands does glow faintly, as does the fill in the roman numerals. But it serves a more important function of increasing legibility during the day than at night. Notice that only the left to right downstrokes of the V and X are filled it, so the pattern is apparently Swiss Chicken Scratch. There appears to be two colors of lume used - greenish for the hands, blue-greenish for the romans.
Quite a different look than the 5135R annual calendar:
Another difference I notice from my 5135R is that my 5056P's rotor is very quiet; no noise from the stainless steel bearings. From a lengthy review on another fora, I learned that the 5135 featured the introduction of ceramic ball bearings (misspellings in original):
"The ceramic ball bearing marks the other important new developement. The well known steel ball bearings, introduced to horological mechanics about fifty years ago, always turned out to be somewhat problematic for lubrication: these are very sensitive for over application of the lubricant, even the right amount of lubricant does not provide from problems due to deterioration. The main problem beeing the steel balls starting to slide instead of rolling and, as a result, contact corrosion or excessive wear can take place. Omitting any lubrication, which seems to work fine in the beginning, the problems are almost the same.
The ceramic ball bearings offer a sound solution for all above; the combination fo balls made of zirconium oxide with a stainless steel inner and outer cage does overcome all problems mentioned. These ball bearings are not depending on any lubricants at all and contact corrosion is no longer an issue."
This is a bit counterintuitive to me - I would associate the sound of the rotor moving as indicating some sort of friction, and the absence of sound as evidence of absence of friction (oops!). Well, we shall see what HWSA says about the condition of the rotor of my 5056P when I send it in for its first service since leaving the factory in 1999 or earlier! From what I've seen on various fora, the replacement of the rotor is not a cheap repair...
Finally... my 5056P and I wish all a happy and healthy new year!
- zhege