November 2014
The Henry Graves Supercomplication — A 1930s Pocket Watch That Still Holds a Record
The Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication, a gold pocket watch with 24 complications commissioned in 1925 and completed in 1932, sold at Sotheby's Geneva on 19 November 2014 for CHF 23.237 million (approximately US$24 million), setting a world auction record for any watch at the time. The result held the overall watch record until the Grandmaster Chime surpassed it in 2019, but it remains the most expensive pocket watch ever sold.
The Henry Graves Supercomplication is a watch born from one of history's great horological rivalries. Henry Graves Jr., a New York banker and passionate watch collector, entered into a friendly but intense competition with automobile magnate James Ward Packard to commission the most complicated watch in the world. Graves won: his Patek Philippe, completed in 1932 after seven years of development, featured 24 complications including a perpetual calendar, sunrise and sunset times, a celestial chart depicting the night sky over Graves' home in New York, and a minute repeater. The watch remained in the Graves family until 1999, when it first sold at Sotheby's for US$11 million — then a record. Its 2014 resale more than doubled that figure, a return that would satisfy even the most demanding hedge fund manager. The Supercomplication is a reminder that, long before silicon valley and smartwatches, the pinnacle of personal technology was mechanical — and that the greatest watchmakers of a century ago were solving problems that still inspire awe today.