A watch once owned by the last emperor of China has sold for a record $HK49 million ($9.4 million) at auction in Hong Kong.
The rare Patek Philippe watch, which belonged to Qing Dynasty emperor Aisin-Gioro Puyi, was bought over the phone by a Hong Kong-based Asian collector, according to auctioneers Phillips Asia.
The auction house's head of watches said it was the "highest result" for any wristwatch once owned by an emperor.
Thomas Perazzi said watch specialists, historians, journalists and scientists spent three years researching the watch's history and verifying its provenance.
In previous auctions, a Patek Philippe timepiece that belonged to the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, sold for $US2.9 million ($4.4m) in 2017.
That same year, a Rolex watch that belonged to the last emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, fetched $US5 million.
Puyi gave his Patek Phillipe to his Russian interpreter Georgy Permyakov when the emperor was imprisoned by the Soviet Union, the auction house said.
Interviewed by journalist Russell Working in 2001, Mr Permyakov said Puyi gave the watch to him on his last day in the Soviet Union.
"These were the kind of things he sometimes did to people that were very special to him," Working said.
Born in 1906, Puyi began his reign at two years old.
After Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945, Puyi was captured at China's Shenyang Airport by the Soviet Red Army.
He was detained as a war prisoner and incarcerated in a detention camp in Khabarovsk, Russia, for five years.
His life inspired the Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor.
ABC/Reuters
