To the general public, John Lennon is most famous for his work in The Beatles, but in the watch buff community, he has a special significance thanks to a 40th birthday gift he received from wife Yoko Ono long after the band had broken up and shortly before his tragic murder. It was a Patek Philippe reference 2499 wristwatch, a timepiece that, in their report on the story, GQ called a “holy grail” of the watch world, and now, after a legal battle that has endured through years of twists and turns, definitive ownership of the watch has finally been settled by a Swiss court.
The Patek Philippe #2499 is one of just 349 pieces made by the famed watchmaker between the years 1952 and 1985. But it was vaulted into an even higher stratum of notoriety when Ono bought it from Tiffany & Co. in Manhattan. Following Lennon’s death, Ono had the watch under lock in key in the New York City home she kept for decades, but in 2005, Ono’s chauffeur, Koral Karsan, is alleged to have stolen it from a safe and secreted it to his home country of Turkey. The theft is supposed to have taken place after some sort of dispute with Ono, and Karsan allegedly used the watch as collateral for a hefty home loan, thus weaving another strand of the watch’s complicated history of ownership.
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After securing the loan, the watch found its way to Karsan’s friend, referred to only as “Erhan G” in the case’s legal history, who brought it to Berlin and Oliver Hoffmann, head of the watch arm of Auctionata, an online auction house. Then it got the attention of the auction house’s CEO, Alexander Zacke, who is reported to have attempted to find a buyer for the watch without running afoul of its rightful owner, even going so far as to sign an affidavit that he received the watch as a gift from Ono herself. He eventually found a buyer, known in legal documents as “Mr. A,” who had to consign a collection of watches reportedly valued at over $630,000 US in today’s money in order to pay for this single watch. Then, Mr. A took the watch to Christie’s, which is how Ono (and, more importantly, Ono’s lawyers) found out not only that her late husband’s famous watch was being sold but that it had gone missing in the first place.
Now, Bloomberg reports that a Swiss judge has ruled that the watch is Ono’s rightful property. Per the court:
“There was no evidence to show that Yoko Ono intended to donate to the driver something as special as the watch, engraved with an inscription, that she had given to John Lennon two months before his death.”
And so, the watch has been ordered to be returned to Ono as soon as possible. As to how much the watch might actually be worth in a fully open and legal auction should she decide to sell it, that’s an open question which is pretty fascinating to anyone interested in high-value watches. For context, another Patek Philippe ref. 2499 that was sold by Tiffany & Co. but was not owned by the writer of “I Am the Walrus,” sold for about $800,000 back in 2020, so the sky is almost literally the limit on how much a collector might pay for such a watch that was not only owned by Lennon but also the subject of such dramatic and attention-getting intrigue and legal maneuvering.
Back in 2017, the legendary “Paul Newman” wristwatch was sold for some $17.8 million, making it the most expensive watch in the world. It’s an interesting hypothetical question whether the Lennon watch could possibly pose a threat to that record, but for now, it seems likely that Ono will hang onto the watch and not rush to sell an item of such presumably sentimental value (even if it doesn’t seem to have been something she spent a lot of time looking at, or she would have noticed it had been stolen far earlier). Some estimates say the watch could be worth tens of millions at auction, which would place it well above the already staggering sum that the Paul Newman sold for. Hopefully, any transfers of ownership that may be in the famous watch’s future will be of the completely legal and above-board variety.