If, like I, you’ve never been to an auction and the only time you’ve seen the hammer fall was when Samantha Jones bid “fifty-fucking thousand” for a cocktail ring in Sex and the City (the movie), the art of negotiation at a public auction might seem a little foreign.

I recall a couple of months ago getting swept up by Freddie Mercury’s Evening Sale with Sotheby’s, watching ephemera from the icon’s life fall into new hands. It was fast-paced, high-pressure, but rhythmic, running like a well-rehearsed script. Such is the case for auctions on the whole, governed by a polished structure, which is probably why I’m yet to attend one. Sure, I’m not able to challenge the aforementioned Jones’ bid with ‘fifty-one fucking thousand,’ but whose to say these invigorating performances that feel like a piece of theatre in their own right shouldn’t be made more accessible?

Enter Maxime Couturier and Lorenzo Maillard. Raconteurs of watch culture, the French-Swiss duo have set out, with the help of Sotheby’s, to give the middle finger to antiquity and rough up the rhythm of the past with an auction like you’ve never seen before. The provocative pair, who head up heist-out, “the outcast watch magazine,” (note the absence of capitals to really enunciate the anarchy), are instead yawning at the days of yore when auctions, and more abstractly, the watch industry at large kept their gates firmly tight and its circles small.

Taking to the cause with their pick hammers in tow, Couturier and Maillard will stage an immersive auction experience in the watchmaking capital of Geneva this week, dubbed ‘Rough Diamonds.’ The aim: to dig deep and score them all. An atypical approach to auctioning, heist-out x Sotheby’s lay the stage for 24 rare watches that you’ve most likely never seen before, from Patek Philippe to Piaget. From citrine-set ring watches (Samantha’s paddle would be going right up), to an Audemars Piguet car-shaped watch – yes, you read that right – the sale riffs on the idea of designers who dared to secede from the mainstream.

“‘[The aim was to take] what is an auction today and do the complete opposite,” reflects Couturier. “Your average watch auction sees around 500 to 700 lots of watches, and not a lot of context for each. It’s a big room full of chairs lined up, most often half-empty.” Relinquishing the lacklustre set up, “we want to take people on a journey, to learn new things and understand why those 24 watches matter.”

Switching things up doesn’t just come with shortening the program, or moderating the venue (a rumoured cave) either. Think of those hefty A4 catalogues containing lists of lot numbers. Monotonous, and most likely to either end up in the bin or blending into your bookshelf, engulfed in dust and forgotten about. Plot twist: shift the medium. In the lead up to the event, heist-out x Sotheby’s have created collectible cards for each lot, which ooze all things Pikachu, in a bid to collect them all. It’s genius merch, and getting your hands on these cards kind of feels like the 25th lot in itself. “We wanted to do an unusual marketing campaign and excite people with childhood memories we probably all have,” reflects Maillard. “Whether it was Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! or Soccer Panini cards, trading cards were a cool and funny tool to talk about the 24 lots.”

So if you find yourself in Geneva this week (an EasyJet flight from London is a solid 50 quid – lies to the boss at the ready), you’d be remiss to miss this moment for the history books. After all, being a partisan or having a passion for something beautiful, irregardless of whether you own it or can afford to, means more about telling a story. “If anything, it’s about experiencing something we don’t usually see in the watchworld. It’s a way to discover funny things we’re not familiar with in a beautiful way, without the fuss,” they share. If EasyJet isn’t your calling, and you’d rather pick up the phone instead, you’ve got until 18:00 CEST on 11th April to do so. But if a little bit of rarefied Boucheron tickles your fancy, dig for the victory of a watch industry embracing change, and celebrate the real rough diamonds, Maillard and Couturier, carrying the torch for the next generation of wrists.