Gold pocket watch set to fetch a record £10 million

A gold pocket watch will go on sale at Sotheby's in Geneva next month, and is expected to fetch a record price. The watch is already the most expensive ever sold at auction. It earned that title when it sold for $11 million (£6.85 million) in 1999. This time around it is expected to fetch closer to £10 million.

Rare
The price comes down partly to the fact that it is made by Patek Philippe, who is the most prized watchmaker by collectors, and is responsible for many of the wold's most expensive watches - including an 18-carat gold perpetual calendar watch which sold for £3.5 million in 2010, and a 1949 stainless steel perpetual calendar watch with Arabic numerals, which fetched £2.5 million in 2008.

However, what makes it more expensive than Philippe's other watches is that it is the most complex watch ever made without the use of computer technology: its why it is called the Henry Graves Supercomplication.

Complicated
It was made for banker and watch collector Henry Graves Junior, who commissioned it in 1925. Daryn Schnipper, Chairman, International Watch Division at Sotheby's, said in a video for the sale that Graves was very competitive, which is why he wanted to own the most complicated watch in the world.

It was designed with immense care, so that it would enable him to tell the time based on the position of the sun when he was at home on 5th Avenue in New York. It features a celestial chart of the sky to exactly match the view from his home. It was so complex that it wasn't finished until eight years after it was commissioned, at which point it was considered the finest ever made.

Schnipper says: "It's beyond a watch: it is a masterpiece." She also described it as the 'Holy Grail' for watch collectors.

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Most expensive
If it fetches £10 million it will set a new record for the most expensive watch ever sold at auction. However, it won't have the title of the most expensive ever made.

That belongs to a monster made by Swiss firm Chopard, which is all about the bling (with a tiny watch face squeezed in between the 15-carat pink diamond, the 12-carat blue diamond, the 11-carat white diamond and the 163 other assorted diamonds). However, among watch collectors who prize clever watchmaking over sparkly bling, the Patek is undoubtedly the most desirable.

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