A whirlwind weekend in Geneva of auction sales, Only Watch and the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève has confirmed the rise and rise of independent watchmakers.

Philippe Dufour is setting salerooms alight; WatchBox has invested in De Bethune; Chrono24 has secured LVMH-backed funding; Watchfinder is presenting all the James Bond watches in its Paris showroom; Richard Mille has launched a certified network for its pre-owned watches… for watch fans, the moving and shaking is on the pre-owned market.

Is Patek Philippe right to discontinue the steel Nautilus 5711/1A? While experts applaud the decision, prices on the secondary market are sky-rocketing and collectors face the fact of a long wait for nothing.

After the Geneva spring auction season ended with a raft of record prices, are collectors prepared to shell out for a watch represented by a non-fungible token?

This year’s raft of anniversaries is retraining the spotlight on adventure-prone watches, starting with the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso and closely followed by the IWC Pilot’s Watch and the Rolex Explorer II. Adding style in the heat of the action are the Cartier Tank and the Patek Philippe Nautilus.

The sports, or rather sports-style, watch stole the show at the Watches and Wonders Geneva digital fair.

Helping us forget ongoing restrictions, the brands at Watches and Wonders unveiled an explosion of colour alongside calendar complications, our future travel companions.

Astronomical functions, automata, chimes, world time… complications require absolute mastery of mechanisms, as illustrated at Watches and Wonders.

In the run-up to the Watches and Wonders digital fair, this selection from the new releases so far sets the tone for a year which, after a sobering period, sees creativity bounce back.