space traveller pocket watch

• Dr. George Daniels CBE
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The Anniversary Watch

The Space Traveller

Dr. Daniels was on a trip to Zurich where he met an important collector for dinner. The collector nudged him and said ‘what do you have in your pocket’, so he took out his watch, a gold Daniels pocket watch with independent double-wheel escapement. The collector said he had to have the watch and asked him to sell it to him. Dr. Daniels said it was not for sale but the collector persisted. Dr. Daniels thought this was an enormous compliment as he did not even ask the price, and so sold him the watch. Dr. Daniels immediately regretted selling this watch and therefore decided to make another which would be an improvement on the first both in terms of complication and accuracy. Having not fully exploited the first watch, the second watch would have separate calculations for each train, it was therefore possible to indicate both mean-solar and sidereal time.In the 18th century to check the accuracy of your watch you had to have a precision clock which was set by a star. This watch by means of having solar and sidereal time could make the calculation for you, the difference being 3.555 minutes per day.

To try and improve the calculation of the train which allowed for an error of 0.8 seconds per year Dr. Daniels contacted a friend at Cambridge University to ask if they knew of a mathematician interested in watches. He got a response almost immediately and extraordinarily enough the mathematicians name was Professor Daniels. The professor was able to calculate a better ratio of 0.28 seconds per day, which Dr. Daniels was very happy with.

Dr. Daniels used to say to people, ‘when you are on your package tour to Mars you need a watch like this, and when using the telephone for long distance calls you could switch the chronograph into sidereal time to cut your bills by 3.555 minutes per day’.Originally the watch had been referred to as the Daniels squared (2) because of the assistance he received from Professor Henry Daniels but Dr. Daniels did not think this was good enough so named it the ‘Space Travellers’ watch in honour of the American landing on the moon which was the greatest space exploratory journey of the century.

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Books and Publications

The highly anticipated biography of George Daniels, written by acclaimed author, Micheal Clerizo is now available. We have a selection of other books about, and by, Dr. Daniels.

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Produced by Roger W. Smith Ltd, and cased, dialled and finished to Daniels exacting standards and style, the Co-axial Anniversary watch is the final defining statement in British horology by Dr. George Daniels.

The Educational Trust

The George Daniels Educational Trust has been set up to encourage and financially assist apprentices and students, with grants and bursaries for training in all aspects of horology.

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George Daniels Space Traveller I Watch Sold For £3.6m, Record for World's Most Expensive English Watch

George Daniels (1921 - 2011), a legendary horologist, created the one-of-a-kind Space Traveller I watch in 1982. And just yesterday, the watch was sold in London for over £3.6m (US$4.6m), breaking the world auction records of an English watch as well as of an independent watchmaker.

Many are familiar with luxury watch producers like Rolex and Patek Philippe but very few might have heard of the name George Daniels. To find out how his watch achieved such an extraordinary price, we must get to know the story of this outstanding watchmaker. 

George Daniels Space Traveller I 18k yellow gold pocket watch

George Daniels

Born in 1926, George Daniels came from a working-class family in London, suffering through poverty and abuse in his early years. The only place where he found joy was in the mechanics of timepieces. In 1944, Daniels joined the British army and left in 1947.

With only £50 of gratuity in his pocket, Daniels bought some tools and became a watch repairer. He also attended horology classes at night to improve his skills. After a decade of hard work, in 1960, he finally opened his first watch repair and cleaning shop in London. Daniels was particularly interested in the works of the early 19th-century French watchmaker Bruget and soon became an expert on Bruget. 

Daniels started out as a watch repairer

Draft of the Space Traveller coaxial escapement design 

Meanwhile, Daniels became good friends with Sam Clutton, who was a vintage watch dealer. Daniels began to investigate into expensive handcrafted watches, and under Clutton's convincing, he embarked on a journey of watchmaking. In 1969, Daniels sold his first handcrafted pocket watch to Clutton for £2,000.

One of the most prominent achievements of Daniels was creating the coaxial escapement in 1974. Traditional escapements had to use lubricants but this eventually caused problems with accuracy as oil thickened over time. However, the coaxial escapement used radial friction instead of sliding friction, making lubricants unnecessary. This design was widely used in the 1990s Omega watches. 

George Daniels (left) and American astronaut Eugene Cernan (right)

Throughout his life, Daniels only produced 23 watches, Space Traveller I being one of them. Created in 1982, the name of the watch pays tribute to the NASA Apollo missions.

Daniels expressed his interest in space exploration in an interview, saying that space technology is the world's most advanced technology and hoped to become part of it. He incorporated the mean-solar and sidereal times, age and phase of the moon as well as the equation of time indications in the Space Traveller I for the needs of astronauts. 

Dial with Arabic numerals located on the right shows the sidereal time, dial with Roman numerals shows the mean solar time; second dials are located below

The backside of the watch opens up to its coaxial escapement

Space Traveller's design layout 

Solar time is the time system that we use, measured according to the apparent time and the path of the sun, which means that a solar day is 24 hours long. Sidereal time is measured according to how long it takes for the sun to rotate a full circle which takes 23hrs 56m 4.1s.

As the Earth's axis of rotation is tilted, there is a time difference between the actual times of sunset and sunrise and the time shown on the watch. Therefore, the inverted fan-shaped dial on the watch shows the time difference, according to different seasons. The largest difference is 16 minutes. 

Space Traveller II sold for £3.2m in 2017

With such a delicate and complicated mechanism, Space Traveller watches are unique in their design and extremely valuable. In 1982, Daniels sold Space Traveller I to a collector but quickly realised that he regretted it. In the following year, he produced another one named Space Traveller II.

The present Space Traveller I was first auctioned in Sotheby's Geneva in 1988 for CHF220,000 (US$222,987). 30 years later, its price has soared to over £3.6m (US$4.6m) which is almost 30 times its previous selling price.

As to where the Space Traveller II resides, the watch had been in Daniels' collection until his death in 2011. In 2017, Space Traveller II was sold in Sotheby's London for £3.2m, setting the auction record for an English watch at the time. The record is now replaced by Space Traveller I. 

The most expensive English watch 

George Daniels (1926-2011) Yellow Gold Watch With Daniels Double-wheel Escapement, Mean-solar And Sidereal Time, Annual Calendar, Age And Phase Of Moon And Equation Of Time Indications 1982 Space Traveller I

Lot no.: 143 Created in: 1982 Diameter: 62.5mm

Estimate: £700,000 - £1,000,000 Price realised: £3,615,000

Auction summary

Auction house: Sotheby's London Sale: Masterworks Of Time: George Daniels, Visionary Sale date: 2 July 2019

Lots offered: 143 Sold: 120 Unsold: 23 Sold by lots: 84% Sale total: £6,300,814

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• Here’s How You Can See George Daniels’s Space Traveller II Watch in Person

The pocket watch by the late modern master will be on display in London for the next three years.

James gurney, james gurney's most recent stories.

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Legendary watchmaker George Daniels ’ Space Traveller II, widely considered to be the finest of the 24 timepieces that Daniels completed in his lifetime, has been put on display at London’s Science Museum . You’ll find it within the Company of Clockmakers collection thanks to a private loan to the museum. It’s notable for many reasons, not least of which is that when it sold at auction in 2017 for £3.2 million (approximately $4.2 million), it set a record for British-made watches that went unbroken until Daniels’ Space Traveller I went for £3.6 million (approximately $4.7 million) this July.

Daniels did not single-handedly save fine watchmaking as some of the more excitable collectors seem to believe, but he did provide both an intellectual framework and a fierce passion that inspired both collectors and watchmakers (F.P. Journe once gave him a watch simply engraved “to my master”). Space Traveller II illustrates the vision that Daniels brought to his watchmaking.

The inspiration for both Space Traveller watches was the 1969 Apollo Moon landing, which is why the dial shows both mean solar time (the time apparent from the Earth’s rotation in relation to the sun, which we read on clocks and sundials) and sidereal time (which corresponds to the Earth’s rotation around the sun). Space Traveller II was made or, at least, started by Daniels for his own use shortly after the first watch was sold in 1982 and was the watch he wore most up until his death in 2011. It features his ’compact chronograph’ mechanism as well as a clutch to switch between solar and sidereal modes.

The movement of George Daniels’ Space Traveller II watch.  Isidora Bojovic

The watch is part of an exhibit about George Daniels in the Clockmakers’ Museum collection (appropriately enough he was Master of the company in 1980 and a winner of its rarely awarded Gold Medal). It’s in good company too, as the museum collection includes some 600 watches, 30 clocks and 15 marine timekeepers, ranging from the 15th century to the present day, including Harrison’s H5.

The Space Traveller II will be on public display for a minimum of three years at the Clockmakers’ Museum, which is free to enter and located on the second floor of the Science Museum .

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George Daniels’ Space Traveller watch sets new record

George Daniels’ celebrated Space Traveller pocket watch has set a new auction record for an English watch.

The piece originally sold for £1.3m ($1.6m) in 2012. At Sotheby’s last night it made £3.1m ($4.3m), more than double its previous result.

Daniels (1926-2011) created the timepiece as an intellectual exercise. It’s designed for use in interstellar travel, offering an imagined astronaut everything he’d need to tell the time in space.

George Daniels made this second version of the Space Traveller in 1982

As well as standard solar time, it also shows side-reel time – which tracks the movement of the Earth against the stars.

Daniels sold the original to a collector, a move he bitterly regretted. He built this copy in 1982 and kept it until his death.  

Demand is extremely high for Daniels’ work, as awareness of his extraordinary timepieces spreads.   

Daryn Schnipper, Sotheby’s senior vice-president, said: “It is not possible to overstate the importance of George Daniels’ contribution to horology.

“Despite having only ever made a relatively small number of timepieces in his lifetime, Daniels’ work and his legacy continue to be critical to the craft of watchmaking.

“The landmark price achieved today is both a tribute to Daniels’ genius and the supreme quality of this watch.

“The `Space Travellers’ watch is no doubt one of Daniels’ finest timepieces and one can only be mesmerised by the beauty of its dial and the complexity and wonder of its movement.”

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A few weeks ago, we broke the news that Phillips, in association with Bacs & Russo, will be auctioning off a trio of extra-special wristwatches by George Daniels during Geneva Watch Auction: XVI this November.

If you missed that announcement and your eyebrow is currently raised at the thought of three (!) separate Daniels wristwatches coexisting in one sale, you have good reason to be surprised: A single wristwatch with the George Daniels name is a remarkable thing in itself, which is why we rarely ever see more than one or two come to auction in any given season. To have three up for grabs at a single auction is simply unheard of.

All three of the George Daniels watches coming to auction at Phillips Geneva in November 2022; learn more here . Image, Phillips

It will be the very first time a George Daniels Anniversary and Millennium wristwatch, both in yellow gold, have appeared in the same auction. Those two watches are top-lot type material in most sale catalogs, but somehow, some way they don't even come close. The headlining watch and the actual top lot in Geneva Watch Auction: XVI is the legendary Spring Case Tourbillon that was completed in 1992 and went on to serve faithfully as Daniels' personal wristwatch for over a decade. It has never appeared at auction previously, and the rumors I'm hearing make it seem like a multi-million-dollar record result is almost undeniable.

I was able to stop by and visit with the Phillips team while in Switzerland this past week to attend the Geneva Watch Days exhibition. The Spring Case Tourbillon was present, and I was able to inspect the watch and chat with the man who sourced the watch for the sale, Alexandre Ghotbi, Head of Continental Europe and Middle East for Phillips Watches, to learn more about its background and how it went from George Daniels' wrist to Aurel Bacs' rostrum.

Today's watchmaking landscape would be irrevocably altered if George Daniels had never discovered the craft. His approach was entirely centered around handcraft and he pioneered the idea of human-centered horology for generations to come. Working out of his Isle of Man workshop in the middle of the Irish Sea, Daniels solely crafted dials, cases, and movements using traditional hand-operated machinery and his sheer ingenuity to pioneer innovations such as the co-axial escapement.

Today's era of independent watch companies and brands that are led by the whims and creative energies of their founders and namesakes can be directly traced back to Daniels' creations. But those creations are incredibly small in number. According to the appendix of his autobiography, All In Good Time: Reflections Of A Watchmaker , Daniels either produced or collaborated on a total of 94 timepieces throughout his life. Those include a total of 23 pocket watches, four wristwatches, 60 Millennium-series wristwatches, two three-wheel clocks, four Grasshopper long clock conversions, and a single chronometer. If you include the Anniversary series – which the appendix of his biography does not – that number jumps to 129.

But that figure isn't entirely accurate. Almost all of the wristwatches included in those numbers were produced by Daniels in partnership with Roger Smith , his protégé, who continues Daniels' work on the Isle of Man to this day. The 60 Millennium wristwatches, 35 Anniversary wristwatches, and two of the other wristwatches were produced by Smith's hand with the leadership and guidance of Daniels. Daniels, by himself, only ever crafted two wristwatches throughout his entire career.

The Four Minute Tourbillon wristwatch was completed first, in 1991, and it was quickly followed one year later by the Spring Case Tourbillon wristwatch, when Daniels was 66 years old. He was apparently so pleased with the result that he decided to adopt it as his personal watch, and it could be found on his wrist for over a decade. The watch has been in private hands since the early 2000s, and its appearance at Phillips will be its auction-world debut and the first time it's been made available to the highest bidder.

The watch has been hidden away from the world for close to two decades, and it's finally out in the world again. I wasn't sure how to approach this portion of my story when I walked into the Phillips suite this past Monday, on the first day of the Geneva Watch Days show. I was nervous. And I don't usually get nervous before seeing a watch. I've handled million-dollar Patek Philippe and Richard Mille timepieces. I've taken many a loupe to record-breaking vintage watches such as Paul Newman's $17.5 million "Paul Newman" Daytona . But those all felt somewhat elementary when faced with the history and significance of George Daniels' personal piece.

So I tried to ignore the provenance when handling and examining the watch. I took the effort of blocking out the image of a bespectacled Daniels looking down on me and wondering what the hell I was doing with his watch. And what I realized, after attempting to separate the watch from its famous maker, is just how special the watch is by itself. It absolutely stands alone as a one-of-a-kind horological achievement. 

The Spring Case Tourbillon looks like a fairly conventional George Daniels timepiece (if there is such a thing) at first glance. The 42mm yellow-gold wristwatch has a dial that references the old-world aesthetic of Abraham-Louis Breguet. The dial features hours, minutes, seconds, and a power reserve on separate sub-dials, each featuring a three-dimensional solid-gold frame surrounding delicate hand-turned guilloché dials in a silver tone, with three separate, distinctive visible guilloché patterns. The hands are all made of matching yellow gold and highly visible, while the hour and minute hand in particular have a sharp lance-shaped design. The watch is almost shockingly simple before you realize what else there is to it.

It's in the name. The architecture of the case design is split into two parts; there's an outer smooth shell and an inner round element that contains the entirety of the dial and movement. A simple curved spring lines the bottom of the inner caseband and a hinge is attached to the three o'clock external side. When a small button on the outside of the case at the traditional nine o'clock position is engaged, the inner element will immediately jump up and snap halfway open to reveal a view of the watch's caseback. This swiveling action enables quick access to the caseback displays, all without requiring the watch to be taken off the wrist. 

The caseback features a shade of silver and a mix of guilloché that's similar to the front side of the watch, in addition to a date display, a day-of-week indicator, and an open aperture that reveals the tourbillon. The six o'clock tourbillon is said to include a slimmer, early version of the co-axial escapement, with a variable inertia balance wheel, as well as a Breguet overcoil hairspring with terminal curve. The crown is positioned subtly at the 12 o'clock position, a placement that gives the case a more symmetrical appearance. It's all very technical, but it doesn't detract from the traditional elegance on display.

"Can you imagine? He just sat there and made every part of the watch himself – and he's a self-taught horologist," says Ghotbi, the Phillips executive. "There's a mystique and a bit of romance about Daniels. He made his dials, he made his hands, and then he made his case, and he still made everything pleasing to the eye. And when you look at his watches, some people may find them to be kind of brute; that's because they're fully handmade and he didn't go for embellishments. He wanted everything that he did to be by necessity; he wasn't ostentatious or interested in beauty for the sake of beauty. He wanted everything to make sense."

I was speaking with another collector friend recently who tossed out the idea that the timepieces produced by Daniels are the closest descendent we have to Abraham-Louis Breguet's pioneering horological and aesthetic developments, even more so than the company that carries the 18th century watchmaker's name today. I think the Spring Case Tourbillon, with its use of boundary-pushing technical watchmaking and clever "jumping" case design, paired with a historical dial format, is a wonderful testament to Daniels' unique ability to cross over between centuries in his watchmaking.

There has been very little public discussion on the Spring Case Tourbillon over the past two decades. We all knew the wristwatch – a unique piece in every which way – existed somewhere out in the world, but discussion around the significance of the watch was mostly quiet and I think, fair to say, was largely ignored. Out of sight out of mind, after all. 

I figured sourcing the watch must have been the coup of the century for the Phillips team. And to not only have one Daniels wristwatch, but three in the same sale is, again, downright remarkable. But it turns out it actually wasn't that difficult. It all started with a simple conversation.  

The unnamed current owner and consignor of the Spring Case Tourbillon called up Phillips a few months ago and asked if they were interested in taking one of his watches that was not the Daniels piece for an upcoming sale. Ghotbi knew that the Spring Case Tourbillon was in the individual's collection and decided to gently broach the topic. 

"I told him this is a great time. We just sold the platinum Anniversary 00 for $2 million, the desire for independents is higher than ever, and there's more people learning about independents and Daniels than ever," Ghotbi says. "A few days later, I was speaking with one of his advisors, who told me he had another client who had stopped by and said he was thinking of selling his George Daniels Millennium. I told him that we're of course interested in it."

Image, Phillips

And a few more days after that, Ghotbi was speaking about the newly consigned Daniels pieces with a different client who owned a George Daniels Anniversary. "He thought it would be 'quite interesting' to have all three George Daniels wristwatches together; that's basically never happened before. We thought it would make for a nice small set, similar to the Philippe Dufour and F.P. Journe sets we had last year. It all came together very naturally through conversation and word of mouth. And we managed to get these three. It's super exciting and humbling to have such an incredible selection, but especially the Spring Case Tourbillon because it's never been on the market."

The Spring Case Tourbillon had a long journey before it landed at Phillips. After spending the best part of a decade on Daniels' wrist, a friend of Daniels reportedly convinced the watchmaker to sell the watch to him. After the "friend" owned the watch for a few years, it more recently was privately sold to another individual collector, who is the one who decided to consign the watch to Phillips. It's never been publicly sold, which tentatively places it in a status all its own when it comes to the highest echelon of George Daniels timepieces.

The market and interest for George Daniels timepieces has never been higher. Ghotbi is correct when he highlights the platinum-cased George Daniels Anniversary 00 that sold at Phillips New York a few months back for an incredible $2,389,500 USD. In that same sale, the F.P. Journe Chronomètre Souverain that was gifted to George Daniels by Journe in 2010 sold for $1,482,000, won by an in-the-room bidder. And if you look a little further back, to December 2021, a tourbillon pocket watch made by Daniels in 1971 for the English lawyer Edward Hornby sold at Phillips New York for $1,663,500 USD. The online high-end secondary market retailer A Collected Man also sold the George Daniels "Blue" wristwatch , created in collaboration with Roger Smith, for £1,000,000, in 2020.

The most expensive George Daniels watch at auction to date, however, goes back even earlier, to 2019, when the famous Space Traveller's Watch I , a chronograph pocket watch, sold at Sotheby's for $4.6 million USD in 2019, a record high for both a Daniels timepiece, as well as for English watchmaking as a whole.

So, does the Spring Case Tourbillon have a chance to surpass it?

The George Daniels Four-Minute Tourbillon, the only other known wristwatch produced by Daniels himself, sold at Sotheby's London in November 2012, as part of the legendary George Daniels Estate Sale , for 385,250 GBP, or approximately $446,000. Image, Sotheby's

Auction lots are always tricky to forecast, but if we look at a single micro-trend within the past year's auction results for George Daniels timepiece, I'd be comfortable leaning in the direction that the Spring Case Tourbillon is headed for unprecedented territory.

Let's look at the results of the Edward Hornby pocket watch and the George Daniels Anniversary 00. The pocket watch was a true George Daniels creation that represents a unique chapter in the English watchmaker's history. It's legitimately a historically important creation within the transitionary scope of mid-to-late-20th century watchmaking. Its all-in price of more than $1.5 million USD is nothing to sneeze at, but I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed at the result, given the provenance of the pocket watch. 

The platinum-cased George Daniels Anniversary 00 sold for an incredible sum of USD $2,389,500 at Phillips New York in June 2022 . Image: James K./ @waitlisted

Now, compare that to the $2,389,500 result of the platinum-cased George Daniels Anniversary 00. Yes, this is a George Daniels watch in that it bears the man's name on the dial and features an aesthetic he helped create. But it was not handmade by Daniels himself in the same way the Edward Hornby pocket watch and Spring Case Tourbillon were. The Anniversary 00 that was auctioned off was completed by Roger Smith, circa 2019, almost a decade after Daniels' death. 

The 1971 George Daniels "Edward Hornby" Tourbillon sold for $1,663,500 at Phillips New York in December 2021. Image: Phillips

The unique F.P. Journe Chronomètre Souverain gifted by Journe to George Daniels in 2010 sold for USD $1,482,000 at Phillips New York in June 2022. Image: James K./ @waitlisted

Yes, it's natural to expect some degree of pricing discrepancy between the results of pocket watches and wristwatches at auction – you can only wear one of them (comfortably) on your wrist, after all – and I don't want to take anything away from the beauty and inherent value the Anniversary 00 still possesses. But it does make me wonder how collectors who are shopping at the top of the market are currently prioritizing the historical significance of different watches.

Looking back at the recent George Daniels results at auction, it appears that the Spring Case Tourbillon has very few, if any, faults to keep it from soaring. It's a wristwatch, which should endear it to the largest enthusiast base possible, and it is completely a George Daniels creation – and the only timepiece he decided to keep on his wrist for the better part of a decade.

The Daniels Space Traveller pocket watch is the most expensive George Daniels watch ever, achieving for GBP 3,196,250, or approximately $4.3 million USD, at Sotheby's London, in September 2017.

"For me, it truly is one of the most beautiful watches I've seen – and I've seen a lot of watches," says Ghotbi. "Coming up with an estimate was almost impossible. What do you quote for a watch made and worn by one of the greatest watchmakers of his time? He only made two wristwatches!" 

The George Daniels Spring Case Tourbillon has an estimate in excess of one million Swiss francs.

Phillips Geneva Watch Auction: XVI will take place at La Reserve in Geneva from November 5-6, 2022. You can learn more and register to bid online at Phillips . 

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The development comes as Russians are reported to be suffering from power outages in their homes in the Moscow region caused by technical issues at plants amid subzero temperatures.

On January 4, a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is about 30 miles south of central Moscow. Since then, tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes.

Affected areas include the cities of Khimki, Balashikha, Lobnya, Lyubertsy, Podolsk, Chekhov and Naro-Fominsk, a map published by a Russian Telegram channel and shared on other social media sites shows.

Other Russian media outlets reported that in Moscow, residents of Balashikha, Elektrostal, Solnechnogorsk, Dmitrov, Domodedovo, Troitsk, Taldom, Orekhovo-Zuyevo, Krasnogorsk, Pushkino, Ramenskoye, Voskresensk, Losino-Petrovsky and Selyatino are also without power.

The Telegram channel said that at the 820th Main Center for Missile Attack Warnings, "the crew...is on duty around the clock."

"It is here that the decision on a retaliatory nuclear strike is executed," the channel said.

Newsweek could not independently verify the report and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry by email for comment.

Power outages have also been reported in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, in the country's western Voronezh region, in the southwest city of Volgograd, and in Rostov, which borders Ukraine, a country that Russia has been at war with since February 24, 2022.

On Sunday, two shopping malls in St. Petersburg were forced to close because of problems with light and heating, reported local news outlet 78.ru. Hundreds of other homes in the city have had no electricity, water or heating for days amid temperatures of -25 C (-13 F).

Russian authorities have also been forced to compensate passengers of a train that ran from Samara to St. Petersburg (a 20-hour journey) without heating during -30 C (-22 F) temperatures. Videos circulating on social media showed carriage windows frozen over. A passenger also said the toilet didn't work during the trip because of frozen pipes.

Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about the Russia-Ukraine war? Let us know via [email protected].

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Live from London: George Daniels Space Traveller I Sells for US$4.56m

The George Daniels Space Traveller I, one of the most important watches of the 20th century , has just sold at Sotheby’s in London for  £3.62m, or about US$4.56m, all fees included.

That makes the Space Traveller I the most expensive watch sold in 2019 so far – though it will doubtlessly be eclipsed by the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime in steel for Only Watch – and the most expensive watch ever by an independent watchmaker.

A big boost to Sotheby’s market share in watch auctions, the record-setting Daniels was the final lot in the first auction of  Masterworks of Time , the sale of a collection of over 800 pocket watches owned by Erivan Haub, the late German supermarket tycoon .

The last time the Space Traveller was sold was in 1988, where Haub paid  220,000 Swiss francs for it at Sotheby’s in Geneva. Prior to that, the watch was been sold by London antique watch dealer Bobinet in 1982 to a collector by the name of Jay Lennon. In almost forty years, the Space Traveller has had only three owners.

The auction

Having concluded just over an hour ago, the auction took place on a pleasant summer’s day in London, but it was slow going in the half-filled room. The average age of the attendees was notedly higher than that for a wristwatch auction, reflecting the niche nature of pocket watch collecting.

But a crowd started to form as soon as it came to the Space Traveller, and the atmosphere perked up. Bidding started out as a tussle between an absentee bidder (whose bid was just under a million pounds), and a prominent London-based collector standing at the back of the room.

Soon a gentleman in a grey suit standing nearby joined the fray. He was Andrew Crisford, a friend of Daniels and the owner of Bobinet, which first sold the Space Traveller in 1982. Holding a mobile phone to his ear, Mr Crisford was presumably bidding on behalf of someone.

The two were soon joined by a phone bidder, represented by Sotheby’s watch department chairman Daryn Schnipper, who jumped in at £1.75m. From there onwards it was Mr Crisford against Ms Schnipper’s client, who was speaking English.

But just as Sam Hines, the head of Sotheby’s watch department, was about to bring down the hammer at £2.45m for Ms Schnipper’s client, a surprise bid came from Daniella Carrington of Sotheby’s, causing a stir in the room.

Bidding for an English-speaking client, Ms Carrington quickly upped the ante. Her determined buyer soon made a £150,000 increment, three times the £50,000 demanded by the auctioneer, taking the watch to £2.70m.

Then it was a brief battle between the two phone bidders, with Ms Carrington’s client clinching the watch for an even £3.00m.

With fees that is exactly £3,615,000, eclipsing the record of £3.20m set by the Space Traveller II in 2017, sealing Daniels’ status as the preeminent independent watchmaker of our time.

Update July 2, 2019: Articled amended to note the man in the grey suit is Andrew Crisford of Bobinet.

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