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W
hile ‘modern pocket watch’ may seem somewhat oxymoronic
in terminology terms, a particularly prized example of just
such a haute horological highlight – a George Daniels Grand
Complication pocket watch – stunned industry insiders recently when
it sold for a staggering US$2.4 million, an all-time high among the
specially-sourced lots going under the gavel in Geneva this season.
While many may not be familiar with the name ‘George Daniels’, he is
an English horologist of a 1926-2011 vintage and oft considered one of
the greatest watchmakers of his generation. His chief claim to fame lies
in his invention of the co-axial escapement, a monumentally innovative
mechanism that continually keeps precise time without the watch’s
movement requiring any conducive lubrication.
This particular pocket watch, created at the height of the ’70s
Quartz Crisis, features that very mechanism, as well as Daniels’ first-ever
instantaneous perpetual calendar, a retrograde date, a minute repeater, a
thermometer, an equation of time and a power reserve indicator.
Obviously only too aware of its value, Alexandre Ghotbi, head of sales
for Phillips Geneva, described this unique statement timepiece as “the
greatest horological invention of the last 200 years.” And he should know.Prime Pocket Watch Headlines Auction
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