The most expensive pocket-watch to sell at a British auction went on display for the first time today.
Space Traveller II was bought for £3.2 million but has been lent to the Science Museum, for an exhibition honouring British watchmaker George Daniels.
The British Horological Institute fellow, who died in 2011 at 85, was seen as the best in the world. He made the watch in 1982 and named it in honour of the 1969 moon landing.
The 18ct yellow gold-cased piece has a silver engine-turned dial and an “independent double-wheel escapement”, enabling it to show normal solar time and “sidereal” time, based on the Earth’s rotation relative to distant stars. It also displays lunar phases and includes a stopwatch.
It sold at Sotheby’s in 2017 for £3,196,250. The museum’s Sir Ian Blatchford said it was fitting the “stunning” watch was on display 50 years after the Apollo 11 mission.
