14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, on November 11, auction house Sotheby's announced that a decades-old pocket watch had sold for a whopping £15.1M ($24M / €19.3M) at an auction held in the city of Geneva in Switzerland.
The thing is that, by the looks of it, whoever got this watch also landed themselves a not-so-appealing curse to go with it. Or so some people say now that the death of the previous owner of the watch is making headlines.
The billionaire died two days before selling the watch
As already mentioned, the watch, known as The Henry Graves Supercomplication, was sold to last sold to a man, undoubtedly a billionaire, this past November 11.
Oddly enough, International Business Times tells us that, just two days before the sale, its previous owner died in his home in London.
Thus, it was on November 9 that 48-year-old Qatari billionaire, Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani, who became the timepiece's owner back in 1999 after paying ₤6.9 million ($11 million / €8.8 million) for it at an auction, passed away due to heart trouble.
True, the 48-year-old was known to suffer from a heart condition for quite a while before his passing. Still, some cannot help but be taken aback by the news that Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani died just a couple of days before his beloved watch found a new owner.
So, is this freakishly expensive pocket watch cursed?
This might come as a bit of a shock, but apparently, 48-year-old Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani is not the first person to die after crossing paths with The Henry Graves Supercomplication. On the contrary, the pocket watch is said to have until now made several other victims.
In a nutshell, it was just 7 months after being handed the watch by Patek Phillipe that its first owner, a New York banker named Henry Graves, lost his best friend. A while later, the banker's son passed away in a car crash. Spooky, right?
According to historical records, Henry Graves commissioned Swiss luxury watch manufacturer Patek Phillipe to make him this watch back in 1925. The timepiece, photos of which are included in the gallery below, took three years to design and another five to actually put together.
The Henry Graves Supercomplication shows not just the hour but also moon phases, sidereal time and when the sun rises and sets in New York. In fact, the watch is said to be the most complex ever made without the help of a computer.
For some reason, Patek Phillipe didn't mention anything about a curse when presenting New York banker Henry Graves with the watch. Then again, odds are that there's about as much truth and sense to these tales about how the watch is cursed as it is to the claim that it's Earth that's the Solar System's one and only uninhabitable planet. Arguments presented in the infographic below.
