Our final live auction of the spring 2025 season, the New York Watch Auction: XII, takes place on 7-8 June, at our Manhattan headquarters. The auction includes 140 of the world's finest watches – and though we are loath to boast, we truly think it’s one of the best catalogues we've ever put together. We'll highlight several of the most interesting lots and stories featured in the sale over the next few weeks, including the watch highlighted in this article.
– By Logan Baker
Independent watchmaker Keaton Myrick doesn't work out of the Vallée de Joux or Glashütte. You won't find him in a Geneva workshop with views of Lac Leman. Instead, you'll find him in Sisters, Oregon, a quiet town tucked beneath the Cascades.
It might seem an unlikely place for a watchmaker to set up shop. But for Myrick, a WOSTEP-certified watchmaker with a Rolex past and a passion for traditional watchmaking, it’s exactly where he belongs.
Now, over a decade after introducing his first watch, one of his original "1 in 30" pieces is appearing at public auction for the first time. And it’s happening in New York, this June, at Phillips.
Myrick’s journey began at the Lititz Watch Technicum in Pennsylvania, a school founded by Rolex USA to train a new generation of American watchmakers. After earning his WOSTEP certification, he took a job at Rolex’s service center. But the corporate route never really fit. Drawn to the craft of traditional watchmaking, he returned home to Oregon to set up a one-man restoration shop.
It was in restoration that Myrick found his education deepened. Dismantling vintage pocket watches and marine chronometers taught him what no textbook could. He studied failures as much as successes, reverse-engineering ideas from the past to fuel his own mechanical imagination.
That work became the foundation for his first wristwatch, launched in 2013. The project was modest in scale: 30 watches, made by hand, one at a time, to the highest standards he could manage. The result was the 1 in 30 series.
What Makes the 1 in 30 Special
The watch offered at Phillips, numbered 7 in the series, embodies Myrick’s philosophy: restraint, craft, and integrity. It houses his calibre 29.30, which began life as a Unitas 6497 — but only just. By the time Myrick finishes with it, virtually nothing of the original ébauche remains. He builds the three-quarter plate, bridges, balance wheel, balance bridge, click system, and even the dial and hands in-house.
The balance wheel is free-sprung with four rose gold timing weights, beating at 18,000 vibrations per hour. It sits beneath a batwing-style bridge, inspired by Observatory tourbillons, either in polished steel or, as in this example, in rose gold.
But the star of the show might be the winding click. Drawing from grande sonnerie winding mechanisms, Myrick created a 22-part click that lives on top of the crown wheel. It incorporates a self-limiting function to protect the mainspring from overwind, and is decorated with mirror polishing, heat bluing, and sharp bevels.
The case, originally sourced from Fricker, was made in stainless steel, 42mm across. But Myrick later began machining his own cases in-house, reducing the diameter to 40.5mm and refining the proportions. For this lot, the winning bidder will have the option to send the watch back to Oregon for a recase in Myrick’s newest design.
The dial, too, is remarkable. Frosted German silver with hand-applied pink gold numerals and a guilloché sub-seconds register at nine o'clock, all handmade. The hands are shaped and polished by Myrick himself.
American Watchmaking, Reimagined
Myrick is part of a small but growing group of U.S.-based independent watchmakers, including names like Roland G. Murphy (RGM) and Joshua Shapiro.
His output is tiny — no more than five or six watches per year, and often fewer. He builds 80 to 85 percent of each watch himself. He uses a mix of antique and modern tools, including a retrofitted System 3R setup to reduce machining time between operations. Guilloché is cut on antique rose engines.
Myrick has nearly completed the 1 in 30 series and is now preparing his next project: a run of 28 watches, building on everything he’s learned so far. He’s acquired vintage Elinvar hairsprings. He’s machining pinions in-house on a Bechler lathe. He’s studying new materials like heat-blackened zirconium for dials.
But if there’s one constant, it’s his independence. He has no investors or partners. It's just Keaton, a bench, and a belief that great watchmaking can still happen far from Switzerland.
Preserved in like-new condition and offered by its original owner, the watch pictured in this article will be offered at the Phillips New York Watch Auction: XII, on 8 June 2025. It's accompanied by a Keaton P. Myrick watchmaker card, product literature, and a signed note card.
You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire New York Watch Auction: XII catalogue right here.