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Old Breguet Pocket Watch to Fetch Up To $1.2M
The watch, which once belonged to the founder of news agency Agence France-Presse, will hit the auction block this May at Christie’s Geneva.
The Breguet No. 217 that once belonged to journalist Charles-Louis Havas, founder of the news agency that eventually became the Agence France-Presse, will go up on the auction block at Christie’s Geneva later this spring.
Geneva--A Breguet pocket watch that once belonged to the founder of Agence France-Presse (AFP), the international news agency headquartered in Paris, will be up for sale this May at Christie’s Geneva.
The 18-karat gold No. 217 pocket watch is self-winding, quarter repeating watch with equation of time, day, month and power reserve, and is “today considered amongst the most complicated watches ever realized by Breguet” after the brand’s No.144, which sold at Christie’s in 2012 for nearly $4 million.
Signed “Breguet et Fils,” the watch has a pre-sale high estimate of $1.2 million.
Charles-Louis Havas, who lived from 1783 to 1858, acquired the piece in 1817.
Havas was a former international merchant who became a banker, then journalist and translator, before coming up with the concept of an international and universal news agency in 1835, which eventually became the AFP.
The watch will be sold at Christie’s Geneva on Monday, May 16. It will be on exhibit from May 13 to 15 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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