Auctions: Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication on sale at Sotheby's

0 0 Wednesday, 16 July 2014 Edit this post

The record of most expensive watch ever sold at an auction is held by the Patek Philippe No. 198.385, known as The Henry Graves Supercomplication, which was sold to an anonymous bidder for more than $11 million at Sotherby's Important Masterpieces from The Time Museum Collection auction in New York City on December 2, 1999.

The watch, which is currently exhibited at the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva, will go again under the hammer at Sotheby's Geneva on 11 November 2014 with an estimate of more than 15 million Swiss Francs (US$16.8 million). 15 years after its record-breaking sale, its reappearance on the market will coincide with Philippe’s 175th anniversary celebrations.

The Patek Philippe No. 198.385 was created in 1933 for New York financier Henry Graves Jr., who commissioned it directly from the Geneva's watchmaker. Featuring 24 different horological complications and comprising over 900 parts, this unique pocket watch is considered the most complicated portable timepiece ever designed and manufactured without using computer-assisted technologies (the Patek Philippe Calibre 89, released in 1989, has 33 complications). Three years were required to design it and five it to actually produce it.

Its complications include minute repetition with Westminster chimes, moon phases, power reserve, a perpetual calendar, as well as a chart of the nighttime sky over New York with indications of sunset and sunrise times in the Big Apple.