Henry Graves

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Henry Graves was descended from John Graves of Concord, MA. He was born March 11, 1868 in Orange, Essex Co., NJ, and died March 21, 1953 in New York City, NY. He married Florence Isabel Preston on January 21, 1896 in New York City.

Born into a prominent banking family, Mr. Graves made millions in banking and railroads. He was also an art collector whose single-owner sale was held in 1936 by American Art Association Anderson Galleries, Inc., which evolved into Sotheby's. The highlight of that sale was Albrecht Dürer's Adam and Eve which sold for an impressive $10,000.

An ardent watch collector, Graves was a patron of Patek Philippe, competing with James Ward Packard, the famed automobile manufacturer, for ownership of the most complicated watch in the world. In 1927, Packard commissioned the world's most complicated watch but not to be outdone, Henry Graves surpassed his rival in 1933 to become the owner of the most complicated watch ever made, spending 60,000 SF, nearly five times the price paid by Mr. Packard. It took over 3 years, and the most advanced horological technique, to engineer this truly one-of-a-kind timepiece; only one watch was ever built. Called "the Supercomplication", this pocket watch was held in the Museum of Time near Chicago, IL for years until it was sold for a record-breaking $11,030,000 to a secretive anonymous bidder at a Sotheby's auction held in New York City on December 2, 1999. The watch currently resides in the Patek Phillippe Museum in Geneva, Switzerland, and is the most expensive single piece on display.[1]

The Stauer company suggests (http://www.stauer.com/?sectionpath=1/233/234&pageid=336) that one of their products replicates the Graves design. However good it may be, the Stauer product is clearly not a replicate, based on a comparison with information at Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/2001/11/28/1128pow_print.html):

  • The Stauer product has 4 'complications' (extra features), versus 24 for the Graves timepiece
  • The Stauer product has fewer hands on the day-of-week and day-of-month dials
  • The Stauer product is a wrist watch, not a pocket watch.
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