A gold pocket watch recovered from the ship-wrecked Titanic fetched a record £1.78 million ($2.33 million) at auction this weekend.
The 18-carat Jules Jurgensen gold watch belonged to Isidor Straus, who perished on board the Titanic with his wife Ida, when the ship hit an iceberg and sank in 1912. Straus received the engraved watch as a gift on his 43rd birthday in 1888. The object remains frozen in time having stopped at 02:20, when it was submerged in the ocean water.
Straus’s body was subsequently recovered from the Atlantic Ocean in the following days after the disaster, along with the watch, which had remained in the Straus family until it was sold at Henry Aldridge and Son Auctioneers in Devizes, England, on Saturday.
The watch is now the highest grossing Titanic memorabilia to ever sell at auction, eclipsing the previous record holder, a gold pocket watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor, which sold to a private US-based collector for £1.175 million ($1.471 million) in 2024.
Born into a Jewish family in Otterberg, Bavaria, in 1845, Straus emigrated to the US with his family in 1854. He would eventually go on to become a partner in Macy’s, the New York department store, and he served as a US Congressman representing New York, for one year after winning a special election. Though the Strauses were offered lifeboat seats due to their age when the Titanic began to sink, they refused and were last seen alive on the deckchairs. Ida’s body was never recovered.
The Aldridge and Son sale also included several other items of Titanic memorabilia that together brought in £3 million ($3.93 million). A letter by Ida Straus that she had written on Titanic stationary fetched £100,000 ($131,089). A Titanic passenger list was purchased for £104,000 ($136,333), while a gold medal awarded to the crew of the Carpathia by rescued survivors sold for £86,000 (112,737).
“The world record price illustrates the enduring interest in the Titanic story. Every man, woman and child passenger or crew had a story to tell and they are told 113 years later through the memorabilia,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge told the BBC. “The Strauses were the ultimate love story, Ida refusing to leave her husband of 41 years as the Titanic sank, and this world record price is testament to the respect that they are held in.”
