In Cartier watches, diamonds used to be exclusive on pieces made from precious metals like gold. In the late 2010s, Cartier decided to make their diamond watches more attainable by offering stainless steel diamond timepieces.
In this video, we review stainless steel diamond Cartier watches: Cartier Ballon Bleu, Tank Francaise, and the Panthere. Learn more from our watch expert Michael.
Featured Watches:
Cartier Steel Diamond Ballon Bleu, Tank Francaise, and Panthere
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Transcript:
Fresh from the showcase here at SwissWatchExpo, this morning we are talking about Cartier and the interesting path that the company has chosen to take. Interestingly, going back to the early 20th century, Cartier was primarily a jeweler of the highest caliber. They're known as the king of jewelers and the jeweler to kings because of the number of crowns, the tiaras that they supplied for the coronation of King Edward. But all through the 20th century, they had very limited production of their watches in particular. They are some of the forefront watches for innovation. They invented all sorts of things we've discussed before in the watch world, but they had very limited production. You don't see a lot of vintage Cartier on the market now because some of those years in the fifties and sixties, they might've only produced 50 of a certain model of very, very limited production.
When their management changed, they came up with an idea that everyone must own a piece of Cartier. So they launched the Must collection, which was a series of tank watches that were either sterling silver, or vermeil, which is heavy gold plating over sterling silver with a lot of different dial colors, a much lower price point than they had ever done before, much more of a mass production. It was because of the financial success of that Must series, that they were able to really launch themselves into becoming a worldwide presence in the world of watches and jewelry like they had never done before. So they've realized that marketing a lot of less expensive things to a lot more people, sometimes is a lot better than marketing, a few extremely expensive things to a very small number of people. As their management has changed all through the nineties and the 2000s, they kind of vacillated between these two views.
If you look at their press releases, they went through periods where they decided that the minimum price for any piece of Cartier jewelry should be $3,000, and that if you can't meet $3,000, then you don't get to own Cartier. Then two or three years later, they would come out with the idea. I think for sure, they were a little jealous of Tiffany selling more of their heart tag series than Cartier's entire production was, and they would decide that if we had a lower price piece, that people could be introduced to the brand, think of themselves as a Cartier person, then they would stick with the brand much longer. So they would come out with pieces that were 2, 3, $400 as an entry level piece of Cartier jewelry. How this relates to watches is that they would frequently come out with only really expensive watches, and then a few years later, they would come out with some much more affordable entry-level watches.
Right now, the situation at Cartier is just unprecedented because for many, many years, the entire company history, as far as I can tell, if you can see something different in your research, please tell us in the comments. But it appears that until just the last few years, you could not get a Cartier watch from the factory with original factory diamonds on stainless steel. That was specifically reserved for either white, gold or yellow gold, never for stainless steel. Then in 2017, all that changed. At the 2017, SIHH where they launched the new Panthere, the Panthere had been discontinued in 2004. It laid dormant for many years, and then in 2017, they had the relaunch of an icon. In 2017, here's what Arnaud Carrez, the global marketing director of Cartier said, - I thought this was really interesting - he said, "We want to give value to our clients with extremely competitive pricing, which is part of the essence of Cartier."
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