If only some accessories could tell their lives, John Lennon’s watch would need an entire TV series in the category romantic crime drama. Fugitive from the lost and found pawn shop and disenchanted memoir of a love story timeless, forty-four years after having been (even if briefly) on the wrist of the ex-Beatle, the Patek Philippe 2499 is now being contested before the Swiss Supreme Court. But who will be the legitimate owner of the most poetic and precious watch ever owned by a celebrity?
Currently rated between ten and forty million dollars – so to speak, it could exceed the 28 million of Marie Antoinette’s Breguet Grande Complication – Lennon’s Patek presents itself as a completely singular example. Between 1952 and 1985 the company produced only 349, of which only two in yellow gold co-signed Tiffany & Co. like the model that belonged to the Liverpool singer-songwriter. Known to most under the epithet of “perpetual calendar chronograph”, the watch measures time in eight different ways, including seconds, minutes, days, months, moon phases. Which, at the time, represented a unique unprecedented in the industry.
Then put a cryptic and (no longer) secret engraving on the back and voilàits mechanical poetics of gears makes theupgrades in the legend: «(JUST LIKE) STARTING OVER, LOVE YOKO. 10 – 9 – 1980. NYC». Well, the golden Patek, together with a knitted tie and an American flag pin, was Yoko Ono’s last gift to John Lennon for his 40th birthday, just two months before he was murdered while returning home to Dakota Building. Note, the dedication refers to the song of the same name contained in the album Double Fantasyjust recorded by the reunited couple post-crisis-from-extra-marital-loves and published a few days later. In other words, the timepiece was a symbol of that new, brief, beginning. That his hours were numbered.
After her husband’s death, Ono placed him in a room in her New York apartment. And there she thought he remained, until, in 2014, there was the call from Christie’s: the Patek was in Geneva and the auction house asked for a statement about him. Rather news shocking even for a zen soul like his. From here, curiosity presses and the plot thickens: how did he get to the other side of the ocean?
It seems that the odyssey of the wandering watch began in 2005. Stolen by Koral Karsan, a (devoted?) employee of the widow (who instead claims to have received it as a gift), the wrist treasure is transported to Turkey, and then be exchanged for a large loan and end up straight in the hands of the Berlin auction platform Auctionata. All this obviously without attracting too much attention and keeping the frequencies away radar-Yoko.
An avid watch collector bought it. It’s a shame that by bringing it to Christie’s Geneva offices to have its value estimated, he opened Pandora’s box. This is how it opens complaints judicial proceedings on the legitimate ownership of the artefact between the connoisseur and the Japanese-American artist, so far in favor of the latter, with a final ruling expected by the end of the year. “It’s important that we take it back for everything we’ve been through,” Yoko Ono’s son Sean Lennon told Jay Fielden of The New Yorker, adding, tranchantwhich for him is “a symbol of how dangerous it is to trust”.
And how to contradict it. Yet in our eyes the Holy Grail of lost watches cannot help but release a certain fascination. A bit like that last photograph of Yoko and John, taken by Annie Leibovitz five hours before the tragedy, immortalizing their “goodbye kiss” almost by chance on the cover of Rolling Stones in January 1981, the Patek became a memento mori paradoxical and damned romantic. Capable of crystallizing that bittersweet “starting over” in the passing of seconds, minutes, days, months, lunar phases.
Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
