The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Leo Messi Limited Edition

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Leo Messi Limited Edition honors one of football’s leading goal scorers and icons – Leo Messi. The Argentinian soccer player is known for his precision and smooth movement, which are two values that Audemars Piguet is known across the world for.

In recent times, Audemars Piguet has been creating very exciting models in the Royal Oak and Royal Oak Offshore lines that have paid homage to sportsmen across the most notable disciplines. Models like the Shaquille O’Neal, the Sachin Tendulkar, the LeBron James, and now most recently the Leo Messi has joined those ranks. This model is made in a limited series of only 500 pieces.

The Royal Oak stands as the quintessential luxury sports watch. It came at a time when it was inconceivable to produce a luxury watch in steel. Today, the Royal Oak series is the most popular watch from AP and is a staple in any serious watch enthusiast’s collection. This limited edition model is easily recognizable by its octagonal bezel made in Tantalum, which stands out wonderfully against the brushed steel case.

The case comes in with a measurement of 41mm and just under 11mm for the case height. For this high quality chronograph AP uses a screw locked crown, which also helps to maintain the water resistance at 50 meters. This model is fitted with an anthracite colored large square scaled alligator leather strap secured with an AP styled folding clasp. Audemars Piguet also offers a black rubber strap with the purchase.

Protecting the anthracite dial is a sapphire crystal glare proofed on both sides. The dial boldly proclaims ‘Audemars Piguet Automatic’ at the 12 position. Naturally, a refined watch such as this uses indexes and baton hands with luminescence for visibility of the time at night. This watch features a chronograph which employs a central chrono seconds hand, and two subdials for the chrono minutes and chrono hours at the 3 and 9 positions respectively. At the 4:30 position is a neat date aperture.

The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Leo Messi Limited Edition uses a self-winding chronograph movement caliber 2385. This movement features 40 hours of power reserve and carries a monobloc 18kt gold oscillating rotor. What is a little disappointing is that the oscillating rotor only winds this watch spinning in one direction. However, this is still a tremendous timepiece from Audemars Piguet.

This Leo Messi Limited Edition also comes in 18kt rose gold (limited to 400 pieces), and in 950 platinum (limited to 100 pieces).