Drake’s Three Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Minis: What They Cost
The watches
Three Royal Oak Minis, $39,500 each
Total
$118,500
Originally posted on our Instagram →
Drake was photographed in Toronto wearing three Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Minis at the same time — one in yellow gold, one in white gold, one in rose gold. Around $39,500 each, $118,500 for the set.
The specification is interesting. The decision to wear all three at once is more interesting, and we will come to that.
What they are
The Royal Oak is the watch that changed the industry. Audemars Piguet launched it in 1972, designed by Gérald Genta — the same man who four years later drew the Patek Philippe Nautilus that Ronaldo wears. The octagonal bezel with its eight exposed screws is his.
At launch it was close to a scandal. A steel sports watch priced above the gold dress watches of the day was considered absurd, and it sold badly at first. It went on to create the entire category of the luxury steel sports watch, which Patek then followed.
The Mini is the smallest version at 33mm, and the dial carries the Petite Tapisserie pattern — the fine waffle grid machined into the surface, tone on tone, with faceted gold hour markers filled with luminous material.
Frosted Gold, and why it matters
This is the part worth knowing. The shimmer on these cases is not plating, coating or texture stamped into the metal. It is a hammering technique.
Audemars Piguet developed it with Carolina Bucci, a Florentine jeweller whose family has worked in gold for generations. The method is centuries old — the Florentine technique — and involves striking the gold surface repeatedly with a diamond-tipped tool, driving thousands of tiny indentations into it.
The result scatters light in every direction, so polished gold that would normally reflect like a mirror instead glitters like a stone. It is done by hand, and it cannot be undone or repaired the way a polished case can be re-finished.
That last point is worth remembering if you ever buy one. A frosted case is not something a local jeweller can restore. It goes back to Audemars Piguet or it stays as it is.
The size question
The Royal Oak Mini is sold as a women’s watch. At 33mm it is the smallest in the range, and Audemars Piguet markets it accordingly.
Drake is wearing three of them. That is worth saying plainly rather than dancing around, because it is a deliberate choice and not an accident of sizing.
Small watches have been coming back for several years, and the men’s-and-women’s split in watch sizing has always been more marketing than anything else — a 33mm gold watch was an ordinary men’s size for most of the twentieth century. Rolex now describes its 36mm models as unisex, as we noted on Messi’s Oyster Perpetual.
If you like a small watch, the label on the catalogue page is not a reason to avoid it.
Wearing three at once
There is no practical case for this. Three watches tell you the same time, and two of them are covered by your sleeve.
But it is not random either. The three are the same reference in the three golds Audemars Piguet uses — yellow, white and rose — so worn together they read as a set rather than as three separate watches. It is closer to stacked bracelets than to timekeeping.
Drake has done versions of this before, and it is a recognisably specific piece of styling: the flex is not the watch, it is the arithmetic.
What it actually costs
Around $39,500 each at the frosted gold specification, so roughly $118,500 for the three.
Audemars Piguet, like Patek, allocates rather than sells. Royal Oak references have waiting lists and dealers favour existing clients, and frosted gold pieces are produced in smaller numbers than the standard steel models.
On value: AP sits with Rolex and Patek in the small group of brands whose watches have generally held or gained, which is the opposite of what we described on Mbappé’s Hublot. That said, the Mini in frosted gold is a narrower market than a steel Royal Oak, and narrower markets are slower to sell into.
Where to find one
The position we hold on every page here. The Royal Oak is one of the three most counterfeited designs in watchmaking, alongside the Nautilus and the Daytona. Frosted gold is also widely faked, badly, because a stamped texture superficially resembles a hammered one at photograph distance.
There is no cheap version of this watch and we will not link one. Buy from somewhere that authenticates and gives you papers.
Worth saying
A hundred and eighteen thousand dollars of watches, worn three at a time, in a jacket that covers two of them.
What the frosted gold actually buys is a surface that has been hit by hand thousands of times so it catches light like a gemstone. That is a real piece of craft, and it is more interesting than the total.
Prices checked 8 September 2026 and will move. Market prices for allocated references change with demand. Fashion Place earns a commission on some links at no extra cost to you.
