Patek Philippe Unsolved Mysteries: the Pope, the Captain and the Generalissimo.

One of the most intriguing aspects of collecting vintage Patek Philippe timepieces is solving mysteries, especially when a fresh-to-market piece has an interesting provenance waiting to be revealed. These watches are literally time capsules — a horological message in a bottle. In this video, John presents three unique Patek Philippe pocket watches, each with a fascinating story, and explains how he begins to unravel the mysteries behind each watch. Sometimes we have family lore for intel, which together with Patek Philippe’s Extract from the Archives provide key pieces of information. Today, we can use the internet to help an investigation, but it was not so long ago that an extended trip to a library was needed. John has spent hours on newspaperarchive.com searching old obituaries, and deciphering cryptic messages, monograms and more hidden within the timepiece. The three pocket watches discussed in this video each tell a story from the past of wealth and power belonging to a Pope, a Captain and a Generalissimo. Please let us know in the comments if you can provide any additional information on these pocket watches to help with our research.