How much would you pay for an antique pocket watch?
If it's a watch from the early 20th century made of pure 14-carat gold, it's definitely worth something. If it's a Waltham, it's worth even more: American pocket watches are much more collectible than European ones. The case is modestly decorated, but it bears the initials of the original owner. This might lower the value. Unless that owner happened to be the wealthiest man to perish in the sinking of the Titanic. In that case, its value is in the millions, as we saw last week.
John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV was one of the wealthiest people in the world when he boarded the Titanic, and you could spend weeks studying his Wikipedia page. The Astor dynasty began when John Jacob Astor, a native of Germany, left England in the late 1700s and established an empire in New York dealing in trade, fur, opium, and real estate. Today, the Astor family has even received two peerage titles in the United Kingdom and unites many influential families in the USA, but that's no longer important.
Returning to John Jacob Astor IV, he took over the family business and built the Astoria Hotel in 1897. It was located next to his cousin's Waldorf Hotel, and then they merged into the Waldorf Astoria. During the Spanish-American War, he even became a colonel in a volunteer artillery unit in the Philippines. By the time he boarded the Titanic, his fortune was approximately 87 million US dollars, equivalent to 2.75 billion dollars today.
To say that Jack Astor was not always popular in the press is an understatement. As the head of one of New York's most famous families and probably the richest man in America, he had a dilettante image, sometimes earning the nickname "Jack Ass-tor." Not surprisingly, especially in the early 1900s, his divorce after his mother's death caused much controversy. It didn't help that he soon remarried - at the age of 47 - to an 18-year-old socialite named Madeleine Talmage Force.
It's hard to say whether their age difference was more or less outrageous than the fact that Astor was divorced, but they decided to avoid gossip by going on a long honeymoon through Egypt and Europe. It was there that Madeleine became pregnant, and the couple hurried to return home aboard the RMS Titanic.
We all know what happened next. Allegedly, Astor was very calm, helping women and children into lifeboats, initially thinking the damage was not too serious. Madeleine survived and gave birth to their child a few months later, but John Jacob Astor IV's body was found eight days after the incident and identified by the labels on his clothing. Among the items found was a Waltham watch in a 14-carat gold case with his initials elegantly adorning the front.
Last week at an auction by Henry Aldridge & Son, this watch became the most expensive Titanic memorabilia sold at auction for a price of 1.17 million pounds (~ 1.47 million US dollars / 2.23 million Australian dollars). This is just slightly behind the previous record holder from 2013 - the famous violin played by bandmaster Wallace Hartley as the ship went down, for 1.1 million pounds. Although the violin might fetch more if sold now, it shows how fiercely watches are fought over at auctions these days, especially with a known owner.
Incidentally, the most expensive pocket watch ever sold at auction was the Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication, which went for 23.98 million US dollars in 2014. However, Jack Astor's Waltham doesn't come close to that level of craftsmanship. It's practically a basic model, featuring only minutes, hours, and a small seconds dial. Of course, there's the Paul Newman Daytona, which sold for 17.75 million dollars in 2017, but that's a 1968 sports wristwatch. Perhaps the only comparable sales might be the Zenith pocket watch of Mahatma Gandhi, sold for 2.08 million dollars in 2009, or James Dean's gold-cased Elgin, sold for 42,000 dollars in 2013.
Obviously, the market for uncomplicated celebrity-owned pocket watches is quite unstable, but considering that 14-carat Walthams themselves are worth only 2-4 thousand dollars, their record auction result is definitely more associated with the Titanic than with horological art.