Grand Complication (bonus)·Multiple choice
From 1969 until 1999, the Henry Graves Supercomplication belonged to which collection?
- A.The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
- B.Seth Atwood's Time Museum in Rockford, IllinoisCorrect answer
- C.The Beyer Clock and Watch Museum, Zurich
- D.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The story behind it
Industrialist Seth Atwood bought the watch from Graves' heir in 1969 and put it in his Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois. When the museum closed, Sotheby's sold it in New York on 2 December 1999 for US$11,002,500, a record for any horological object. The anonymous buyer was later revealed in a lawsuit over unpaid Sotheby's bills to be Qatar's Sheikh Saud Al-Thani. He died in London in November 2014, just days before the watch's Geneva sale, where it more than doubled its 1999 price at CHF 23.2 million (about US$24 million).