Cartier Tank Must Steel Quartz WSTA0052

This watch is in excellent condition.

Watch comes with original box, outer box, booklets and dated warranty card.

The Must de Cartier Tank came about as a direct product of the quartz crisis in the 1970s. Quartz watches, which until recently had been expensive prestige products, were arriving in droves at very low prices from Japan. Over the course of two decades, this competitive edge took out many watchmaking brands and forced the survivors to substantially reinvent themselves. Some brands like Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet went upmarket, releasing marketing-heavy watches like the Royal Oak and Nautilus which eventually turned them into unassailable powerhouses. Other brands, such as Cartier, took a leaf out of 'the enemy's' playbook and turned dowmarket and released cheaper and simpler watches.

The Must de Cartier became the precursor to today's 'fashion watches' - by combining the classic Tank case with bold painted dials, it drew a fashion-forward crowd that didn't care about how the watch worked. While the first examples were made with hand-wound movements, from 1982 these watches began featuring quartz movements.

CARTIER

Described by King Edward VII as 'the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers', Cartier is synonymous with perhaps more iconic designs than any other manufacturer. Sitting at the intersection between fine watchmaking and art, Cartier combines decades of heritage with an ability to create original and attractive watch designs.

From its birth in the 19th Century up to today, Cartier has earned a well-deserved reputation for being a manufacture that has successfully transformed the humble wristwatch from a soldier's tool into a true object of desire.