Watch fetches record $21.3 million at Swiss auction

GENEVA: A gold watch billed as the most expensive -- and most complicated -- in the world fetched a record $21.3 million (17.1 million euros) when it went under the hammer in Switzerland on Tuesday, the Sotheby´s auction house involved said.

The sale of the Patek Philippe "Henry Graves Supercomplication", a handcrafted timepiece named after its original owner, a New York banker who ordered it in 1925, was the main event at a jewel and watch auction held in Geneva.

The watch, which weighs more than half a kilo and comprises 900 separate parts, had been estimated to go for a lower amount, $15 million.

But frenzied bidding pushed the price up higher, and the final amount paid was "a new world record," the auctioneer said. (AFP)