A gold pocket watch that belonged to the Titanic’s richest man sold at auction for a record-breaking 1.175 million, or over $1.5 million.
Henry Aldridge & Son, an auction house in Devizes, Wiltshire, South West England, sold the watch to a private collector from the United States on Saturday.
“Thank you to all of our customers today in the room, online and on the telephone,” a post on Henry Aldridge & Son’s Instagram said, adding that the sale of the watch had fetched a “new house record.”
The watch belonged to John Jacob Astor IV, a tycoon and real estate developer who died aboard the ship when it drowned in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912.
“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,” according to the company’s website.
Astor IV, who was 47 at the time the Titanic crashed, escorted his wife, Madeleine, onto a lifeboat before smoking his final cigarette as the ship sank.
The 14-carat gold Waltham pocket watch, inscribed JJA, was discovered on his body when it was retrieved a week later.
The previous highest price paid for a Titanic item was 1.1 million, or around $1.4 million, for a violin that band member Wallace Hartley reportedly played to comfort passengers as the ship sank.
The violin case was sold at the same auction on Saturday for 360,000, or around $455,000.
The RMS Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The catastrophe claimed the lives of around 1,500 individuals.
Harland & Wolff built the ship in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and it was launched on May 31, 1911.
Last year, OceanGate’s submersible imploded while descending to inspect the Titanic wreck. All five people on board were killed.