A pocket watch that once belonged to one of the Titanic’s most renowned passengers has sold at an auction for $2.3 million — a record price for memorabilia related to the historic shipwreck, according to the auction house.
The 18-carat gold watch was gifted to its original owner, Isidor Straus, by his wife, Ida Straus, for his 43rd birthday, said Henry Aldridge and Son, the auction house that sold it on Saturday. It was recovered from his body after the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic in April 1912.
Isidor Straus was an American businessman and politician who owned the Macy’s department store in New York City. He and his wife were first-class passengers on the Titanic during its maiden voyage from England to New York, and the couple are remembered for their final act of selflessness while on board.
Henry Aldridge and Son
Witnesses who survived the Titanic wreck said afterward that the Strauses were offered two seats on a lifeboat once the ship had struck an iceberg, according to the U.K. government’s National Archives. But Isidor Straus refused his seat, instead insisting that it should have been offered to younger men, and Ida Straus followed him, reportedly saying, “Where you go, I go.”
According to those archives, Isidor and Ida Straus were last seen standing arm in arm on the deck of the Titanic, before a wave crashed overhead and washed them out to sea. The Strauses were the ancestors of Wendy Rush, wife of OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, who died in the infamous Titan submersible explosion in 2023 en route to the Titanic wreck site.
Straus’ pocket watch exceeded the previous record sale for a piece of the Titanic’s history memorabilia by about $300,000, according to Henry Aldridge and Son. The previous record was set for another gold pocket watch, which sold an auction last year for about $1.97 million. It had been gifted by Titanic survivors to the captain of the RMS Carpathia, who steered his ship toward the Titanic wreck on the night it sunk and ultimately rescued hundreds of passengers still afloat on life boats, according to the auction house.
“Pocket watches are incredibly personal items,” said Andrew Aldridge, managing director of the auction house, in a statement. “Every man, woman and child passenger or crew had a story to tell and they are told 113 years later through the objects that they owned. Items like this keep the story alive and bring us closer to the memory of one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th century.”
