PiagetCalibre 9P

How I got here

I wanted something flat enough to vanish under a cuff.

Every list points at the same 1957 Piaget movement.

Two millimetres.

The part worth knowing

You will read that the 9P was the thinnest hand-wound movement in the world.

It wasn't. Audemars Piguet were at 1.64 mm in 1938. Jaeger-LeCoultre and Vacheron Constantin got there in the fifties.

The 9P is 2 mm. Piaget's own site still doesn't call it the thinnest. Everyone else does it for them.

1.64 mm. 1938.

So what did it actually do

It made ultra-thin ordinary.

Audemars sold 772 of their 1.64 mm calibre in fifteen years. Piaget built theirs in-house and put it in a catalogue — round, square, rectangular, stone dials from 1963.

The square one is the Protocole, and it is the one I want. The round version is everywhere.

What it really opened up for me is vintage Piaget as a whole. The 9P, the 12P, the old Polo.

Not a record. A product line.

Which one I want

The square. The Protocole, with its engine-turned bezel and dial.

And then everything behind it — this is the watch that made me start looking at vintage Piaget properly.