This story is from an installment of In the Loupe, our weekly insider newsletter about the best of the watch world. Sign up here.
In January, Paul Boutros, deputy chairman and head of watches in the Americas at the auctioneer Phillips, opened his inbox to discover an email from the grandson of Paul Starrett, a master builder and trained architect who, together with his twin brother, was responsible for the construction, in 1931, of the Empire State Building. It was Boutros’s favorite kind of email: an unexpected, unsolicited tale of a watch—in this case, a rectangular yellow-gold Patek Philippe retailed by Tiffany & Co.—with remarkable provenance.
In the email, Starrett’s grandson “explained the story of the watch, that it was sitting in the family’s drawers for decades, unworn, and he was just seeing what it may be worth,” Boutros tells Robb Report. “He wanted to know if we were interested in auctioning it. As soon as I received it, I couldn’t believe the story, and I immediately called him.”
Boutros was able to see the watch in person during a trip to San Francisco in February, and the story only got better. “The watch looked very good in the pictures, but in the metal, I couldn’t believe how well preserved it was,” he says.
