A yellow-gold pocket watch created by English watchmaker George Daniels, who was inspired by the moon landing and space exploration, has sold for a record price, fetching $4,561,507 — the most for an English watch — at a Sotheby’s auction in London on Tuesday.
The watch, the Space Traveller, featured a double-link chain and a gold and blued-steel, double-ended key, according to Sotheby’s. It was one of only 23 pocket timepieces handmade by the master watchmaker.
Daniels conceived the Space Traveller in 1982 as a timepiece to honor the astronauts that he so admired and to commemorate the 1969 moon landing. Daniels was determined that his watch would be one that could be of theoretical use to an astronaut, so he set out to devise a watch that displayed, simultaneously, both mean-solar and sidereal time – time told both by the Earth’s relation to the Sun, and to distant stars.
Traditionally the standard of time used by astronomers, sidereal time is based on the amount of time it takes the Earth to turn on its axis: by measuring the Earth’s transit of a fixed star, one is able to measure the actual time it takes for the Earth to turn on its axis.
Daniels incorporated a highly accurate independent double-wheel escapement, displayed mean-solar and sidereal time to separate subsidiary dials, as well as a calculation for the equation of time shown within a sector to the top of the dial. These made it possible for users to do away with checking the watch against an independent sidereal time-displaying clock or watch.
“This is the ideal watch for those planning to travel in space, or for any with an appreciation of the ultimate in mechanical precision, and a remarkable feat in the history of watchmaking,” according to Sotheby’s.
Inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Space Traveller features solar and sidereal time, equation of time, moon phase, and a double wheel escapement signature to George Daniels timepieces. (Photo Credit: Sotheby’s)
It was also the first time the watch has been in the public eye since it was last seen 30 years ago.
Experts consider the Space Traveller as Daniels’s most famous and coveted watch. In fact, Daniels was so fond of his Space Traveller that, regretting his original agreement to sell the watch, immediately set out to make one other example — the “Space Traveller II.”
The second Space Traveller would remain his personal watch until his death in 2011. It was later sold at Sotheby’s London in September 2017 for £3.1 million (around $3.7 million) — the previous record for an English watch.
Still, the $4.5 million hammer price came as a surprise for many, since the high estimate was set at just $1.3 million.
Aside from setting the record price for the most expensive English watch, it also set the record price for most expensive timepiece by an independent watchmaker auctioned, as well as the most expensive watch auctioned thus far this year.
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