Museum pays €1.69m for Swiss watch

SWITZERLAND: A private Swiss museum has paid 2.54 million Swiss francs (€1

SWITZERLAND: A private Swiss museum has paid 2.54 million Swiss francs (€1.69 million) for a gold Patek Philippe pocket watch, considered one of the most important watches made in the 20th century, Christie's auction house said.

Known as the "Grande Complication", it took nearly eight years to make and was delivered in 1916 to Henry Graves jnr, a New York financier who competed with automobile manufacturer James Ward Packard.

At an auction in Geneva on Monday night, the watch fetched the highest price for a watch sold at Christie's and was the object of a classic auction-room bidding battle. - (Reuters)