A rare Patek Philippe watch as quickly as owned by Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the final emperor of China‘s Qing Dynasty, has been offered at public sale in Hong Kong for a record-breaking HK$40 million (US$5.1 million). An nameless purchaser bought the timepiece, which had been gifted by Puyi to his Russian interpreter during his imprisonment by the Soviet Union. The sale price, which didn’t embody the public sale home charge, exceeded the pre-sale estimate of US$3 million and set a new document for a wristwatch that after belonged to an emperor.
Worldwide , head of watches at public sale house Phillips Asia, mentioned it was “the highest result” for any wristwatch with such a prestigious past ownership. The watch is one of solely eight recognized Patek Philippe Reference 96 Quantieme Lune timepieces in existence. Other notable watches owned by emperors which were sold at auction embody a Patek Philippe timepiece belonging to the final Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, which fetched US$2.9 million in 2017, and a Rolex watch that belonged to the last Emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, which sold for US$5 million in the same yr.
Puyi, born in 1906, began his reign as the final Emperor of China’s Qing dynasty at just two years old. Following Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945, Puyi was captured at China’s Shenyang Airport by the Soviet Red Army and detained as a warfare prisoner in a detention camp in Khabarovsk, Russia, for five years.
The public sale home spent three years working with watch specialists, historians, journalists, and scientists to analysis the watch’s historical past and confirm its provenance. According to Perazzi, the timepiece was the finest that Patek made at the moment.
Journalist Russell Working, who interviewed Puyi’s interpreter Georgy Permyakov in 2001, recalled how the emperor gave the watch to Permyakov on his final day in the Soviet Union, shortly before being extradited to China. Working said…