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Patek Philippe Pocket Watch Sells for £21.3 Million at Auction
Swiss watch brand Patek Philippe have gained quite a reputation in the auction world in recent years after seeing several of its pieces going under the hammer for eye-boggling prices.
The latest to do just that is a Patek Philipp gold pocket watch that fetched a staggering $21.3 million when it was sold recently at auction in Geneva, Switzerland.
The sale of the “Henry Graves Supercomplication”, a handcrafted timepiece named after its original owner, a New York banker who ordered it in 1925, weighs more than half a kilo and comprises 900 separate parts.
Tim Bourne, Sotheby’s worldwide head of watches, said the sale confirmed the watch’s “superstar status”, referring to it as an “icon of the 20th century, a masterpiece that elevates the discipline of watchmaking to art.”
Notable features on the watch, which took five years to assemble, include a host of indicators such as a perpetual calendar, the phases of the moon, sidereal time, indications for the time of sunset and sunrise, and the shifting night sky over Manhattan.
Patek Philippe was founded in Geneva, Switzerland in 1851.