The most expensive pocket watch sold at auction is the Henry Graves Jr Supercomplication, a gold, double-dialled watch crafted by hand between 1925 and 1932 by Patek Philippe of Switzerland. On 11 November 2014, the watch was sold for 23,237,000 Swiss Francs (£15,154,312; $24,073,532) at Sotheby’s in Geneva, Switzerland.
The watch measures 74 mm (2.91 in) in diameter (the same width as a typical smartphone) and is 37 mm (1.45 in) thick, including the domed glass covers on the front and rear faces. Despite its relatively compact size, it weighs 536 grams (1 lb 2.9 oz), which gives an idea of how densely packed the internal mechanisms are. It was sold in its original tulipwood box, inlaid with a mother-of-pearl panel featuring the arms of Henry Graves Jr (1868–1953) – the American banker who commissioned the piece in 1925.
The name of the piece is a reference to Graves’ desire to have the most “complicated” watch in the world. (In horogical terminology, a “complication” is any feature that a mechanical timepiece can perform in addition to telling the time. Common complications include calendars, phase-of-the-moon displays and stopwatch functions.)
The Supercomplication required three years of study in astronomy, mathematics and precision mechanics before a viable design could be finalized. The enormously elaborate mechanism uses 900 individual parts including 430 screws, 110 wheels, 120 various movable parts and 70 jeweled bearings. It took the artisans at Patek-Phillippe – assisted by several other prominent Swiss watchmakers acting as sub-contractors – more than five years to assemble the watch, finally delivering it to Graves on 19 Jan 1933.
The 24 “complications” of the watch include a star chart (calibrated to show the night sky over Graves’ Manhattan apartment on any given night) and a multi-year calendar that will be accurate until the year 2100, as well as various alarm and stopwatch functions. This number of complications remained unbeaten until 1989, when Patek-Philippe released the 33-complication “Calibre 89”. It remains, however, the most complicated watch to have been made without the assistance of computers.
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History of Auctioneering
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The most valuable diary in the world is a journal kept by Dr. Alexander Macklin, a surgeon on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Endurance adventure of 1914-1917, which was sold at Christie’s, London, UK on 25 September 2001 for £104,950 ($153,573).
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The highest price ever paid for a single piece of furniture is £19.045,250 ($36,662,106) at Christie’s, London, UK on 9 December 2004 for the 18th-century Italian Badminton cabinet purchased by Dr. Johan Kraeftner, Director of the Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna, Italy on behalf of Prinz Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein, to be exhibited in the museum.
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The most expensive musical instrument sold at auction is the ‘Lady Blunt’ Stradivarius violin and was sold at £9,808,000 ($15,875,800) by Tarisio Auctions (USA) in London, UK, on 20 June 2011. The auction was organised online on behalf of the Nippon Music Foundation and the proceeds went to the Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.
The authenticity of the violin was certified by the firm W.E. Hill & Sons.
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The most expensive baseball jersey sold at auction was sold for $4,415,658 (£2,789,860), by SCP Auctions (USA) of Laguna Niguel, California, USA, on 20 May 2012.
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A near-complete skeleton of a dodo (Raphus cucullatus) sold for £346,300 ($404,192) with buyers’ premium at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex, UK, on 22 November 2016. It was bought by a private collector, who made the winning bid by telephone. Errol Fuller, Natural History curator at Summers Place, said that the piece was an “amazingly rare”, being the first “relatively complete” skeleton to have come up for auction since the 1920s.
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Most expensive hockey jersey sold at auction was sold for $1,275,707.91 (£860,975.26), by Classic Auctions Inc. (Canada) of Delson, Quebec, Canada, on 22 June 2010.
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The most expensive sweater or cardigan sold at auction is a grey mohair five-button cardigan once worn by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. On 26 October 2019, the cardigan sold for $334,000 (including buyer’s premium) at a Julien’s Auctions event at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York, USA.
This stained, saggy old cardigan became an unlikely fashion icon after Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain wore it during the taping of his band’s acoustic special MTV Unplugged in November 1993.
The cardigan was made by the Manhattan Shirt Company – a mass-market apparel retailer and manufacturer – probably in the early 1960s. The fabric is a blend of acrylic, mohair and Lycra, and its original retail price was probably somewhere around $15 (equivalent to around $130 in 2019). Kurt Cobain likely bought it from a thrift store in Seattle, which was where the famously fashion-averse grunge star did most of his shopping.
During the last year or so of Cobain’s life, he reportedly wore this cardigan frequently, both in public and while at home. As a result, it is worn and damaged, with a missing button, cigarette burns and a mysterious crunchy brown stain around the right front pocket.
After Cobain’s death in 1994, his wife gave it to their daughter Frances’s nanny, Jackie Farry. Farry had intended to give it to Frances when she got older, but in 2014 she was forced to sell it to pay medical bills. When it first went up for auction, it fetched a price of $137,500 – more than double the expected value.
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The most expensive durian fruit sold at auction was 1.5 million Thai baht ($47,784; £37,635), and was achieved by Maliwan Han Chai Thai, Pa Toi Lung Mu farm and the King Of Durian festival (All Thailand) in Nonthaburi, Thailand on 7 June 2019.
The rare kanyao durian was handpicked just a day before it was sold from a nearby farm where the minimum price of the fruit is 20,000 baht.
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The most expensive pork carcass sold at auction is JPY 1,394,690 ($12,756, £9,964, €10,809) which was produced by Hitachi Farm Co., Ltd. (Japan) and sold at Tokyo Meat Market in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, on 25 August 2017.
The pork breed is Bunabuta (mixed breed of Landrace, Middle White, and Duroc) which is known for soft meat with white fat, resulting in sweet and pure taste. Hitachi Farm is located in Kuji, Ibaraki, Japan.
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