Following the Titanic accident, perhaps the most famous maritime accident in human history, items recovered from the shipwreck have been finding buyers at auctions for a long time. Most recently, a gold pocket watch belonging to John Jacob Astor IV, the richest person on the Titanic, was sold at an auction. An unnamed buyer paid 1.5 million dollars for the watch.
“Thank you to all our customers who were in the room, online or on the phone today, a new auction house record of 1.175 million pounds for the Astor pocket watch,” Henry Aldridge & Son auction house said in a statement.
Thousands of pounds of offers flew in the air
Apart from the gold pocket watch, other items that found buyers at the auction included the Wallace Hartley suitcase sold for 260 thousand pounds, the Harrison Titanic souvenir book for 85 thousand pounds and the chess board removed from the Titanic for 44 thousand pounds. It was stated that the next Titanic auction will be held in November 2024.
The luxury liner Titanic, which was said to be “unsinkable”, set sail for New York from the port of Southampton in England with 2,224 passengers and crew on April 10, 1912. On April 15, 1912, the ship hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, killing 1510 passengers. 47-year-old John Jacob Astor IV was considered one of the richest people in the world at the time. Astor also did not survive the accident.
Previously, the most expensive antique to come off the Titanic was Wallace Hartley’s violin, which he kept playing as the ship sank to calm the passengers.
source: businessinsider
