Unique Ford Coppola Watch Sells for Record $10.8m
December 15, 25
(IDEX Online) - A unique watch created for The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola fetched $10.8m, smashing its pre-auction estimate of $1m.
The sale set a new world auction record for watchmaker F.P. Journe and indeed for any watch by an independent watchmaker.
The unique F.P. Journe FFC Prototype was specially designed by master watchmaker Francois-Paul Journe and it features an innovative, articulated hand mechanism that indicates the hours using its five fingers. Minutes are read from a rotating ring on the outer edge of the dial.
Coppola, aged 86, was selling the watch, together with six other timepieces, at the Phillips New York Watch Auction: XIII after suffering huge losses on the self-funded 2024 film Megalopolis. which cost well over $120m to produce, and brought in just $15m at the box office.
Phone bidding for the F.P. Journe FFC Prototype quickly escalated and lasted 11 minutes.
Phillips said it was the highest price it had received for a watch sold in the US since 2017, when Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona sold for $17.8m.
Ford Coppola's other six watches raised around $1.2m between them.
Pic courtesy Phillips, with indication of how hands show the time.