Titanic passenger’s gold pocket watch sells for record $1.1 million

A gold pocket watch that belonged to the wealthiest passenger aboard the Titanic was sold for £900,000 ($1.1 million), setting a new record for Titanic memorabilia sales.

The 14-carat gold Waltham pocket watch, owned by businessman John Jacob Astor IV who died with the ship in 1912 at 47, was acquired by a private collector in the US at Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, during an auction on Saturday, BBC news reported.

“Astor is well known as the richest passenger aboard the R.M.S. Titanic and was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of roughly $87 million (equivalent to several billion dollars today,)” the auction house wrote.

The watch, engraved with the initials JJA, was found along with Astor’s body when his remains were recovered several days after the Titanic sank. He was also found with a diamond ring, gold and diamond cufflinks.

John Jacob Astor IV’s cufflinks and plan of the Titanic’s first-class accommodation were also on auction offer.

Astor was one of around 1,500 people who died when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg. His pregnant wife, Madeleine, survived.

The previous highest amount paid for a Titanic artefact was for a violin that also sold for £900,000, but which, with taxes and fees at the time, took up to £1.1m.

In November, a rare menu from the Titanic’s first-class restaurant sold at auction along with a pocket watch from another man who died in the 1912 tragedy. The menu sold for about $101,600. The pocket watch, recovered from Russian immigrant Sinai Kantor, sold for about $118,700.