File photo a Sotheby's employee shows the Henry Graves Supercomplication handmade watch.(AP)
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.