The gold watch of the richest passenger who died on board the Titanic, sold at auction for a huge sum

It is considered one of the most precious relics of the Titanic, the most famous ocean liner in history that sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912.

It is about the gold watch of John Jacob Astor, businessman and prominent member of the wealthy Astor family.

The man was last seen alive smoking a cigarette and chatting with another passenger on the deck of the sinking ship.

Astor’s body was found in the frozen waters of the Atlantic a week later, and with it the pocket watch.

The starting auction started from figures between 120,000 and 180,0000 euros. Instead, the watch was sold for 1.36 million euros by the British auction house Henry Aldridge & Son in the Kingdom, thus breaking every record among objects found and sold at auction in the hull of the Titanic.

An American who remained anonymous won this millionaire race.

The watch is a 14k gold Waltham engraved with the initials JJA. The watch was expected to fetch between £100,000 and £150,000 when it went under the hammer at Wiltshire-based auction house Henry Aldridge & Son.

Astor is believed to have been one of the wealthiest men at the time of the Titanic’s sinking, with a net worth of around $87 million – the equivalent of several billion dollars in today’s money.

Astor’s wife, Madeleine, survived the shipwreck. He was the one who helped her into the lifeboat. And when her husband’s body was recovered, the watch was passed down from Astor’s son, Vincent, to his father’s executive secretary’s son, William Dobbyn, and was called “a unique part of Titanic history and one of the most important pieces of the history of horology about the most famous ship in the world”.

Going back in time to find other Titanic memorabilia, in 2013 a violin was sold for almost €1.3 million and recently, its case was sold for €425,000.