Global Courant 2023-05-23 18:51:00
HONG KONG — A watch once owned by the last emperor of China’s Qing dynasty, whose life formed the basis of the Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor, is up for auction in Hong Kong for a record HK$40 million (S$6.9 million) sold. Tuesday.
An anonymous buyer bought the rare Patek Philippe watch that belonged to Aisin-Gioro Puyi. The price does not include the auction fee.
Mr Thomas Perazzi, head of watches at auction house Phillips Asia, told Reuters this is “the highest result” for any wristwatch ever to have belonged to an emperor.
It was one of only eight known Patek Philippe Reference 96 Quantime Lune timepieces and was gifted by Puyi to his Russian interpreter when he was imprisoned by the Soviet Union, the auction house said. It easily beat a presale estimate of US$3 million (S$4 million).
Other emperor-owned watches sold at auction include a Patek Philippe timepiece that belonged to the last Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, which sold for $2.9 million in 2017.
A Rolex watch that belonged to Vietnam’s last emperor, Bao Dai, fetched $5 million at auction in 2017.
Born in 1906, Aisin-Gioro Puyi was the last emperor of China’s Qing dynasty, who began his reign at the age of two.
After Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945, Puyi was captured at Shenyang Airport in China by the Soviet Union’s Red Army. He was held as a prisoner of war and imprisoned for five years in a detention camp in Khabarovsk, Russia.
The auction house said it has spent three years working with watch specialists, historians, journalists and scientists to research the watch’s history and verify its provenance.
Mr Perazzi told Reuters that the watch was the best Patek made at the time.
Journalist Russell Working, who interviewed Puyi’s interpreter Georgy Permyakov in 2001, said he gave the watch to Permyakov on his last day in the Soviet Union, shortly before he was extradited to China.
“These kinds of things he sometimes did with people who were very special to him,” Working said. REUTERS
