Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication

Eight years for one watch

In 1925 Henry Graves Jr. commissioned Patek Philippe to make a pocket watch, at a price of 60,000 Swiss francs, then $15,000. It took three years to design and another five to manufacture, entirely by hand and long before computers could help with the calculations. The watch was delivered on January 19, 1933.

The result has 24 complications, the term watchmakers use for any function beyond telling the hours and minutes. Among them are Westminster chimes, a perpetual calendar, the phases and age of the moon, the times of sunrise and sunset, and a rotating chart of the night sky. That star chart is set for New York, as seen from Graves's apartment on Fifth Avenue.

Inside are 920 individual parts: 430 screws, 110 wheels, 120 removable parts and 70 jewels. The 18k gold case measures 74 mm across and the watch weighs 536 grams, more than a pound. For more than 50 years it was the most complicated mechanical watch ever made, until Patek Philippe completed its Calibre 89 in 1989 for the company's 150th anniversary.

Henry Graves Jr.

Graves was born on March 11, 1868, in Orange, New Jersey. His father was a founder of the banking firm Maxwell & Graves, which dealt in railroad and industrial securities from 52 Broad Street in Manhattan, and the son made millions in banking and railroads. He married Florence Isabel Preston in 1896, and the family kept homes in New York City, Irvington-on-Hudson and on Eagle Island near Saranac, New York.

He collected seriously and widely: paintings, engravings, coins, paperweights, and above all Patek Philippe watches. He acquired about 39 of them between 1922 and 1951, favoring observatory competition winners, tourbillons and technically ambitious pieces. Several carried his family motto, 'Esse Quam Videri', to be rather than to seem.

The story usually told is that Graves wanted the watch to beat the American carmaker James Ward Packard, another major Patek Philippe client, in a contest for the most complicated watch. Packard and Graves were both clients in the same years, but one recent study of the archives argues that the head-to-head rivalry was largely a narrative shaped in the 1990s to promote the watch. Graves died in New York City on March 21, 1953, at 85.

From a family to a museum to the auction room

After Graves died the watch stayed in his family, passing through his daughter Gwendolen and later his grandson. The family sold it to Seth G. Atwood for his Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois, for $200,000; sources give the year as 1968 or 1969. It was displayed there for three decades.

When the Time Museum closed in 1999, the watch went to auction in New York on December 2, 1999. It sold for $11,002,500 to Sheikh Saud bin Muhammed Al Thani, a record for any timepiece.

On November 11, 2014, it was offered again, at a hotel in Geneva. About five bidders competed for some 15 minutes. The hammer fell at 20.6 million Swiss francs, and with the buyer's premium the total was 23,237,000 Swiss francs, reported at the time as about $24 million. The winning bid was placed by the watch specialist Aurel Bacs on behalf of an undisclosed collector, after a final duel with the Lebanese collector Claude Sfeir. The buyer has never been officially named; there was speculation that the family that owns Patek Philippe bought it for the company museum.

What makes it unique

This is a single object, not a model. There is one Henry Graves Supercomplication, and its identity rests on its documented chain of ownership from Graves through the Time Museum to the 1999 and 2014 sales. Its New York star chart, tied to Graves's own address, is unlike any other watch.

Its fame comes from the combination of its complexity and its age. Everything inside it was designed and made by hand in the 1920s and early 1930s. Watchmakers attended the 2014 sale in person, among them representatives of rival Swiss makers and the independent master Philippe Dufour.

It held the title of most expensive watch ever sold at auction until November 10, 2019, when a unique steel Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime wristwatch sold for 31 million Swiss francs at a charity sale in Geneva.

The numbers

Complications

24

Parts

920 (430 screws, 110 wheels, 120 removable parts, 70 jewels)

Diameter

74 mm

Weight

536 grams

Material

18k gold

Production

One piece; 3 years of design, 5 years of manufacture

Timeline

1. Mar 11, 1868

   Henry Graves Jr. is born in Orange, New Jersey.

2. 1922

   Graves begins buying Patek Philippe watches.

3. 1925

   Graves commissions the watch for 60,000 Swiss francs.

4. Jan 19, 1933

   Patek Philippe delivers the finished watch.

5. Mar 21, 1953

   Graves dies in New York City; the watch stays in his family.

6. 1969

   Seth G. Atwood buys it for his Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois (some sources say 1968).

7. 1989

   Patek Philippe's Calibre 89 finally surpasses it as the most complicated watch.

8. Dec 2, 1999

   After the Time Museum closes, it sells at auction in New York for $11,002,500.

9. Nov 11, 2014

   It sells at auction in Geneva for 23,237,000 Swiss francs, a record for any watch.

10. Nov 10, 2019

    A Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime sells for 31 million Swiss francs, taking the record.

The world in 1933

• Jan 30, 1933

  Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany.

• Feb 27, 1933

  The Reichstag building in Berlin burns.

• Mar 4, 1933

  Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated as president.

• Mar 5, 1933

  Roosevelt declares a nationwide bank holiday during the Great Depression.

• Apr 4, 1933

  The airship USS Akron crashes off New Jersey, killing 73.

• Dec 5, 1933

  Prohibition ends in the United States with the Twenty-first Amendment.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication is number 3 of 100 in the watches entries of the FLOAT 100. 54 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (99 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The star chart on the back shows the sky over New York as seen from Graves's Fifth Avenue apartment.
• It took eight years to design and build, entirely by hand.
• Graves paid 60,000 Swiss francs for it, then $15,000.
• Its 920 parts include 430 screws and 70 jewels.
• It was the most complicated watch in the world for more than half a century, until 1989.
• It set the auction record for a timepiece twice, in 1999 and in 2014.
• The famous Graves-versus-Packard race may owe more to 1990s storytelling than to the archives.