Gold pocket watch owned by wealthiest Titanic passenger up for auction

For just $187,000, you could be the proud owner of a pocket watch that belonged to the wealthiest Titanic victim.

The 14-carat gold Waltham timepiece once owned by business magnate John Jacob Astor IV is up for auction this weekend at Henry Aldridge & Son in Britain.

The stunning watch, engraved “JJA” was found when Astor’s body was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean a week after the infamous sinking of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City in 1912.

The starting bid for the haunting piece is £60,000, or roughly $75,000 — but experts expect the watch to go for up to £150,000 ($187,320).

Astor, who earned a reputation as a real estate mogul after building the Astoria Hotel and later the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, had helped his pregnant teenage wife onto a lifeboat before stepping back onto the doomed liner to wait for men to be called, according to the auction house.

The 47-year-old was last seen smoking a cigarette with author Jacques Futrelle, who also died in the tragedy.

“Astor is well known as the richest passenger aboard the R.M.S. Titanic and was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of roughly $87 million (equivalent to several billion dollars today),” according to Henry Aldridge & Son.

The pocket watch was one of the personal objects found on Astor’s body that helped rescuers identify him, as well as the initials sewn on the lapel of his jacket.

The first-class passenger was also wearing a gold watch, gold and diamond cufflinks and a diamond ring with three stones. Astor’s pockets were also lined with $2,720 in cash and several pieces of gold, silver and franc.

“The watch itself was completely restored after being returned to Mr. Astor’s family and worn by his son, making it a unique part of the Titanic story and one of the most important pieces of horological history relating to the most famous ship in the world,” Aldridge said.

Before hitting the auction block, the pocket watch had been featured at numerous museums, including the Mariners Museum in New York, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the National Geographic Exhibition in DC.

The sale of the pocket watch comes as other items from the infamous shipwreck have gone up for auction, including a letter from a lucky Titanic survivor who described that the liner nearly collided with another ship just one day into its doomed journey.

Earlier this year, the controversial door from James Cameron’s “Titanic” was officially sold at the Treasures From Planet Hollywood auction last week for a whopping $718,750.