The Most Famous Watch You’ve Never Heard of

The Henry Graves Supercomplication is the most famous watch you’ve never heard of.  Why have you never heard of it you ask?  Probably because if you want to buy it, it will run you around $17 million to sell watches Boca Raton.  That’s a lot of coin for a pocket watch don’t you think?  It is the most complicated watch ever made by human hands.  Even with other watches made with computers it remains one of the most complicated watches ever made.  It is the first time in 15 years this watch has landed on the market.  Last time in 1999 it sold for $11 million.

The Supercomplication has a total of 24 horological complications.  It was made by (who other than) Patek Philippe in 1933.  Soethby’s calls it “the most famous watch in the world”.  Yea, the most famous watch you’ve never heard of.  The watch came about when famous banker Henry Graves commissioned Patek Philippe to make the most complicated watch ever.  It took the company three years of research and five years of effort to complete the watch.  Some of the features include Westminster chimes, a perpetual calender, moon phase, sidereal time, power reserve, sunset and sunrise, and an illustration of New York’s night sky.

Tim Bourne, worldwide head of watches at Sotheby’s says it is “Indisputably the ‘Holy Grail’ of watches.  The Henry Graves Supercomplication combines the Renaissance ideal of the unity of beauty and craftsmanship with the apogee of science”.  For 56 years the Supercomplication reigned supreme as the most complicated watch in the world.  Then, when computers started assisting watchmaking, it gave up its rule.  But it still remains the most complicated watch in the world made only by hand.