Cartier Tank 2302

The evidence places the 2302 close to the start of the Tank Française, though not quite at it. Monochrome's account of the 1996 launch gives the larger model an automatic movement, but the earliest auction-house date for a 2302 is Christie's circa 1999, and most catalogue estimates cluster around 2000, when Christie's and Bonhams place steel examples and the Collector Square index of auction results records steel and steel-and-gold ones as made circa 2000. Sotheby's has a two-tone watch at circa 2005, and two estimates reach circa 2010. Beyond that the record changes character: marketplace listings and brackets such as 2010 to 2020 describe when a watch was sold or registered, not when Cartier made it. One Bonhams group lot even dates a 2302 to circa 1990, six years before the model existed, a fair warning about how loosely such estimates can be set.

Why Cartier gave the automatic movement to this size alone is not documented. Across the dated watches the catalogue descriptions barely differ: calibre 120 with 20 jewels, a guilloché or sunburst silvered dial, Roman numerals, centre seconds and the date at 6, in steel or with yellow gold. SJX describes the whole line as essentially unchanged from its launch until the 2023 redesign, and in that redesign a large steel automatic appears again, WSTA0067 with calibre 1853 in a bigger 30.5 × 36.7 mm case, which Cartier did not present as the 2302's successor. Read together, the two facts give the 2302 its place: through the original Française's long run in steel and two-tone, the self-winding choice was this one size.

The 2302 is defined by its movement, so the useful comparisons are the quartz sizes of its own line and the automatic that appeared in the 2023 redesign.

The risk in a 2302 is a quiet substitution rather than a rare variant: a refinished dial, a replaced bracelet, a movement that is not the calibre 120, or a listing whose model code means less than it appears. Current dealer asking prices put a steel example at roughly $2,800–$4,500 and a steel and yellow-gold example at about $4,200–$6,400; these are asking, not realized, prices.

What the money buys is the mechanical Tank Française. Of the original steel and two-tone sizes, this is the one that winds itself on the wrist, its blued seconds hand sweeping past the Roman numerals while the quartz models beside it in the catalogue waited on batteries. For a wearer who wanted the Française's bracelet and dial with a movement to be serviced rather than a battery to be replaced, the 2302 was the answer Cartier gave, and in steel and two-tone it was the only one.