Retired teacher sells wartime watch he found in a drawer for $15k

By Douglas Whitbread via SWNS

A retired schoolteacher who found the “holy grail” of wartime watches in a drawer after seeing an episode of the Antiques Roadshow has sold it at auction for £12,000 ($15,678).

The man, who wished to remain anonymous, went looking for the heirloom after he saw an expert valuing a similar timepiece and realized his could be worth a small fortune.

During the show, clocks expert Richard Price told the owner of a wartime Omega watch that it was part of a collection known as the dirty dozen.

He explained these wristwatches were commissioned for the military by the War Office during World War II and manufactured by 12 chosen clock markers.

Richard valued the Omega at £2,500 ($3,266) but said the rarest of the collection was made by a Swiss company called Grana, later known as Certina.

He called these watches “the holy grail of the Dirty Dozen” as there were only a few thousand produced at the time.

After watching the segment, filmed at the Ulster Folk Museum, the former teacher rushed over to a chest of drawers and found the sought-after timepiece, where it had sat for half a century.

He then put the watch under the hammer at John Taylors Auction Rooms, in Louth, England on April 12, where it sold for £12,000.

Auctioneer James Laverack, of John Taylors, said collectors would pay a high price for the watch so that they could complete a full set of the period timepieces.

He said: “Most of the chosen firms supplied at least 10,000. Omega hit 25,000. Grana made the smallest number, perhaps as few as a thousand.”

“Dirty Dozen collectors dream of completing a full set. Only twenty are known to have made it so far – and that’s entirely down to the rarity of the Grana.”

James added: “The discovery of this watch has been something of a miracle.

“The retired teacher actually missed the transmission of the Ulster Antiques Roadshow a few weeks ago but . . . a real stroke of luck . . . he decided to view it later.

“He knew nothing about the Dirty Dozen nor just how rare the watch is. I think it’s fair to say that he was quite pleased when we told him what we expect it to make.”