The World's Most Expensive Watch (Watches, Timepieces, Clocks)

The Day That Changed Watch Collecting - BusinessWeek - Stacy Perman : The auction of the Graves Supercomplication netted $11,002,500, which is still the world record, 10 years later.

As Stacy Perman writes:

"Known as the Graves Supercomplication, the unique timepiece possessed 24 complications—or mechanical features in addition to timekeeping—including a different chronological function for each hour of the day, a chart of the nighttime sky over New York City complete with the magnitudes of the stars and the Milky Way, and a minute repeater that played the same melody heard in London's Big Ben.

The storied watch was the most ingeniously complicated mechanical watch ever created and required five years to design and build. Off the market for 66 years, it was also the ultimate prize in a 30-year collecting duel between Graves and the American automaker James Ward Packard, who spent a good part of the early 20th century attempting to acquire the most extraordinary timepiece with the greatest possible number of complications ever made. Both men wanted the best—and for that they chose Patek Philippe."