GENEVA: A gold watch billed as the most expensive — and most complicated — in the world fetched a record $21.3m when it went under the hammer in Switzerland yesterday, the Sotheby’s auction house involved said.
The sale of the Patek Philippe “Henry Graves Supercomplication”, a handcrafted timepiece named after its original owner, a New York banker who ordered it in 1925, was the main event at a jewel and watch auction in Geneva.
The watch, which weighs more than half a kilo and comprises 900 separate parts, had been estimated to go for a lower amount, $15m.
But bidding pushed the price to “a new world record,” the auctioneer said.
The gold open-face chronograph took Patek Philippe five years to piece together.
“This is not a watch you can wear. It is a watch that symbolises strength, power and money,” a watch industry expert said earlier.
It displays not only the hour but also a plethora of other indicators: 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.
Its Westminster chimes sing joyfully every 15 minutes.AFP
