In-Depth: The Wild, (Mostly) Complete Story Of John Lennon’s Lost Patek Philippe 2499
If you’ve been around watches, no doubt you’ve seen this photo. It’s collector catnip: John Lennon, one of the most famous people of all time, wearing a Patek Philippe ref. 2499 perpetual calendar chronograph, one of the most important watches of all time. Just months after this photo was taken, the former Beatle was murdered, and the watch hasn’t been seen since.
Thanks to an ongoing lawsuit in Geneva, new information about the mythical Patek’s history and current whereabouts has surfaced. But the lawsuit is only the beginning of a story of extortion, theft, and a stolen Patek that traveled from New York to Turkey to Germany to Geneva and now, perhaps, back home, as well as the legacy Lennon left behind.
But First, What Is The Lennon 2499?
Lennon, posing with his Patek Philippe 2499, given to him by Yoko Ono for his 40th birthday.
Before we get to the international intrigue, let’s start by talking about what the Lennon 2499 is.
As Ben wrote in our Reference Points for Patek Perpetual Calendar Chronographs, “the Patek 2499 is considered by many to be the ultimate Patek Philippe, capturing old world charm with modern wearability. The 2499 is also probably the most studied and dissected of PP perpetual chronos.”
Patek made just 349 examples of the 2499 over its 35-year production run. It’s complicated and rare and collectible, but also beautifully designed with modern proportions – 37.5mm, compared to its smaller predecessors.
Just a couple months ago, we wrote about some of the myth-making around the Lennon 2499, and the court case confirms some of those rumors are in fact true: Yoko Ono bought the watch for Lennon’s 40th birthday, just two months before he was murdered in New York City outside his and Ono’s apartment. The yellow gold Patek 2499 was purchased at Tiffany & Co. in New York and has the retailer’s signature on the dial.
A Patek Fourth Series 2499 in yellow gold, signed Tiffany & Co. – the same as the Lennon 2499, and one of just two known. Image: Courtesy of Sotheby’s
The date of purchase means it’s a fourth series 2499, the last series of the reference, produced from 1978 through 1985 and differentiated from earlier references by its modern sapphire crystal.
The Lennon 2499 was further engraved with a single word on the back, in reference to the first song from an album that Ono and Lennon composed after their brief separation. (The court filings redact the word that’s engraved and no one will tell me, so leave your best guess in the comments!)
I’ve been told the Lennon 2499 is in pristine condition. When it was first brought to Christie’s in 2014, it was in like new condition, on the original Patek strap. The pin buckle stretched just a single hole on the strap, where Lennon wore the watch.
The Lennon 2499: The Long And Winding Road
Lennon and Ono during a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam. Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Legal filings from Geneva reveal that the Lennon 2499 is the subject of an ongoing dispute between two parties, including Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. While many personal details of the dispute, including the multiple parties that have traded the watch since it was allegedly first stolen from Ono have been redacted, personal details make clear that Ono is one party (described as a widow of Japanese nationality living in New York), while the party disputing Ono’s claim of ownership is an Italian national living in Hong Kong (more on him in a moment). Now, it’s time to fill in the missing details of the story.
After Lennon’s death in 1980, all of his personal effects were cataloged before becoming the property of Ono. Included among these were the Lennon 2499.
It’s possibly the most valuable wristwatch on Earth.
The next chapter for the watch begins in 2006, when Ono’s former private driver, Koral Karsan, was arrested for attempting to extort $2 million from Ono, threatening to release embarrassing audio tapes and photos he’d secretly recorded, even threatening to kill Ono and her son. Karsan also claimed he’d had a sexual relationship with Ono. He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was immediately deported to his home country of Turkey.
Lennon’s glasses were among the stolen items found when Auctionata went bankrupt in 2017.
Then, in 2017, evidence that Karsan had been stealing Lennon’s property from Ono surfaced. Auctionata, a Berlin-based auction house, had just gone bankrupt, and when dispersing its assets, lawyers and police found 86 items of Lennon’s personal property in Auctionata’s storage, including eyeglasses and diaries. According to the auction house, a man identified as Erhan G. by German police (in Germany, it’s customary not to release last names) had sold it these items, acquiring them from Karsan. While Erhan once held the Lennon 2499, it was not among these items – here’s what happened to it.
According to the Geneva court filings, Karsan had given the Lennon 2499 to Erhan in 2010, also giving him the 86 other items he’d stolen around this same period. Erhan then reached out to Auctionata in 2013, eventually entering into a consignment agreement with Auctionata to sell the watch. Erhan noted in a separate letter that he could not guarantee right of ownership, or that Ono wouldn’t make a claim to the Lennon 2499. With that, questions about the watch’s true ownership started to be raised.
Shortly after, in an agreement signed in January 2014, Auctionata agreed to privately sell the watch to an Italian dealer, now living in Hong Kong, for €600,000, instead of bringing it to public auction. To those in the business, he’s a dealer with a suspect reputation – I was also told he was on a board of advisors for Auctionata at the time, perhaps taking advantage of this access for his own personal gain. In addition to the cash, the dealer also agreed to sell more than 40 vintage watches to Auctionata as part of the deal.
A few months later in 2014, this Italian dealer took the watch to Christie’s Geneva to inquire about selling it. After receiving the watch in June, Christie’s reached out to Ono’s attorney in September 2014 inquiring about the watch. Apparently, this surprised Ono. She replied that the watch must still be at her home, locked in a cupboard with other items from Lennon. After all, this was one of the last gifts she’d bought Lennon, just two months before his death. But after looking through her cupboard, Ono discovered for the first time that the watch she’d bought Lennon 35 years prior was no longer there. According to Ono, Karsan was one of the few individuals given access to the room where the watch and Lennon’s other personal items were kept.
Ono tried to take steps in the U.S. to get the watch back, but with it now held in Geneva, she eventually filed a claim there in October 2015, contesting the Italian dealer’s ownership of the watch, saying it’d been stolen from her.
2499J
After this, the parties entered into a “consignment-escrow agreement” with Christie’s, under which the Lennon 2499 would be held in escrow by a lawyer for the Italian dealer until ownership could be fully adjudicated. Since 2015, this has been the status of the Lennon 2499, sitting in legal limbo while the courts decide its ownership.
Now, this Italian dealer is the other party in this lawsuit, disputing ownership of the Lennon 2499 with Ono.
Soon after this is when Auctionata went bankrupt, and the 86 other items of Lennon’s that Karsan had stolen were discovered, with criminal proceedings taking place against Karsan and Erhan. In the German proceedings, Ono testified about the stolen property, and specifically about the Lennon 2499. She said it was never a gift to Karsan, as he had once claimed.
In its final report, German investigators found Erhan guilty of receiving stolen goods, saying he had known it was possible the watch was stolen, even having tried to sell it privately before bringing it to Auctionata. In August 2017, the watch was registered in the Stolen Property Register. Erhan was eventually sentenced to one year in prison, while Karsan went on the run, with the Berlin prosecutor, and later EUROPOL, issuing a warrant for his arrest.
From there, Ono and the Italian dealer both made claims against each other, asserting their ownership of the Lennon 2499. The Italian dealer’s claim was basically that Karsan had been given the watch by Ono (in her German testimony, Ono said she had given Karsan a cheap watch shortly after Lennon’s death because she owned many, but in no way would it have ever been an item that meant so much to her), and that Ono had never reported it as stolen. Ono pointed out she didn’t even know it’d been stolen until Christie’s first contacted her in 2014, after which she quickly began trying to get the watch back. In 2022, the court held additional hearings on the case.
(Just Like) Starting Over
After the hearing, the court affirmed a previous ruling that Yoko Ono is the rightful owner of the Lennon 2499, having originally been stolen by Karsan. It found no evidence of Ono’s intention to give the watch to her former driver, as claimed by the Italian dealer. The Swiss court also pointed to the German criminal investigation, which found that Lennon’s 86 other items were also stolen. The dealer also essentially tried to put forth what I’d call a “finders keepers” theory of his ownership, which the court quickly rejected. After having been apart from the watch for more than 40 years, it might be back in Ono’s possession soon now.
The case can be appealed once more before the decision is final.
Can’t Buy Me Love
A 2499 Fourth Series, signed Tiffany & Co., same as the Lennon 2499 – sold in 2020 for $818,600.
Yoko Ono is 90 years old now. Earlier this year, she moved out of the famous Dakota building, her long-time residence on the Upper West Side of New York City where her and Lennon first moved in 1973, the same building the former Beatle was tragically shot in front of in 1980.
She retreated to a home that her and Lennon built in the Catskills, the latest move in her step back from public life, the result of deteriorating health in recent years. She’s long been known to be battling an illness that has left her confined to a wheelchair, reportedly requiring round the clock medical attention. There’s reason to believe there’s no monetary figure in the world that could tempt Ono into selling such a sentimental item, much as some auctioneers might try – especially since she’s now been trying to get the watch back for the better part of a decade. Meanwhile, Ono and Lennon’s son, Sean Lennon, has had a successful music career in his own right, and it’s possible he might also value the watch more than any amount of money.
The Geneva court case was first reported in French by Swiss legal blog Gotham City and brought to the watch world by an employee of Phillips. It’s inside baseball, but I point this out because it’s interesting that an employee at one of the most well-known auction houses would post about such a thing. To be clear, Phillips has no claim to the watch. Perhaps it’s their way, led by auctioneer Aurel Bacs, who has sold the Paul Newman Paul Newman and other important wristwatches of the past 20 years (also including the Bao Dai and the steel 1518), of driving the narrative. Perhaps the hope is it’ll lead to the consignment and sale of the Lennon 2499, a white whale for any auctioneer and a potential swan song for Bacs’ storied career.
If that Italian dealer had somehow won this case, I think Christie’s would have had the first right to sell the watch via the consignment-escrow agreement it’d entered into with the parties in 2015 when the ownership dispute began. Some of the employees involved in that deal are no longer at Christie’s (and some are now at Phillips), so perhaps that wouldn’t have been the end of the dispute. But now the watch seems likely to end up in Ono’s hands anyway. She’s always had her own way of doing things, so what she, or Sean, might do with the Lennon 2499 is anyone’s guess.
Money (That’s What I Want)
But let’s imagine, just for a moment, what might happen if the Lennon 2499 did appear at auction.
In December 2020, Sotheby’s sold the second-known yellow gold fourth series 2499 signed by Tiffany & Co. – exactly what we believe the Lennon 2499 to be – for $818,600. While that watch had original owner provenance, that original owner wasn’t one of the most famous people ever. Surely, much more would be in store for the Lennon 2499. The Tiffany signature helps distinguish it from other fourth series examples, otherwise the more common and less desirable of 2499 variants.
During the case, Ono presented evidence that the watch had been valued between $2 million and $4 million. According to most I spoke to though, this is a conservative estimate.
“It’s possibly the most valuable wristwatch on Earth,” dealer Eric Wind told me. He said it could be a $40 million watch if the right messaging and marketing went into the Lennon 2499.
Meanwhile, another former auction specialist I spoke to wasn’t so sure. He pointed to Mel Blanc’s 2499, which sold for about $700,000 in May of this year. Mel Blanc was the voice of Bugs Bunny, no small claim to fame. Obviously, the Lennon provenance is worth more, but he said it was more like a $10 to $15 million watch than the astronomical, record-breaking numbers some have thrown around. Some experts speaking with Bloomberg about the Lennon 2499 agreed with this range.
Eric Clapton’s platinum 2499.
Another comparison might be the platinum 2499 – Philippe Stern had just two made in 1987, using remaining movements from the reference. Only one went to private hands (the other to the Patek Museum), first auctioned in 1989. Eventually, it made its way into mega-collector Eric Clapton’s collection, before Christie’s sold it in 2012 for $3.6 million. It’s just as rare, and with similar rockstar provenance, which is why Ben called the platinum 2499 the “Ultimate 2499” in his Reference Points. But the Lennon 2499 might give it a run for that title. When I asked Ben about the auction potential of the Lennon 2499, he initially said he would’ve guessed $3 to $5 million, similar to the Clapton 2499, but because of the building narrative around the watch, it’s hard to guess where it’d end up.
Of course, the final comparison is to Paul Newman’s Paul Newman, which sold for $17.7 million 2017. But even here, the appeal is different. While the Paul Newman Daytona isn’t a particularly rare watch, the name Paul Newman came to define a sub-culture of watch collecting. Meanwhile, a Tiffany-signed 2499 is objectively rare, but it’s not a watch that’s identified with Lennon. The appeal of the Lennon 2499 lies more in the legend of Lennon himself, and with Ono giving it to him just two months before he was killed, it almost feels like the watch is a small part of that story. And when artists like Lennon leave us too soon, their legend only seems to grow with time.
Lennon and Ono in 1969
The irony with both of these watches – two of the most famous and valuable vintage wristwatches ever – is that they come from two guys who seem like they couldn’t have been bothered to care much at all. Perhaps that’s part of their appeal. I’ve watched enough interviews of Lennon to know that he always seemed to have the perfectly flippant, witty, and insightful thing to say when asked a question, and I know he’d have something similar to say about all this mess (a personal favorite Lennon ad lib is when he forgets the lyrics to “Don’t Let Me Down” during The Beatles’ rooftop concert and he’s got the other guys in stitches).
Finally, other Beatles watches have also appeared at auction, the most similar being Ringo Starr’s Patek 3448 perpetual calendar, which sold for $180,000 in 2015. But in that same auction, one of Lennon’s guitars sold for almost $1 million. It illustrates how there are The Beatles, and then there’s John Lennon of The Beatles.
And now that the long, winding story of the Lennon 2499 has come to light, its journey of theft, from Tiffany & Co. to Turkey to Geneva, and potential resurfacing might only add to its appeal (and price).
But even as the court case has surfaced new details of John Lennon’s Patek 2499, it’s still possible we might never see the watch. And I’d be fine with that too.
Postscript: One more fun detail: Look at that photo of Lennon wearing that 2499 one more time. See the American flag pin? I’m told that pin was also bought at Tiffany & Co. and is also engraved on the back to commemorate Lennon obtaining his Green Card in the United States. In the early ’70s, Lennon increasingly caught the attention (and ire) of the U.S. government – he became an anti-war advocate and opposed the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972. This led to increased surveillance of Lennon and Ono by the government and CIA, culminating with the Nixon White House ordering his deportation. Dozens of high-profile supporters pleaded for Lennon to remain in the U.S., and in 1975 a panel of judges ruled in his favor. In 1976, Lennon obtained his Green Card. The story makes sense, and also makes it all sound like it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek by Lennon. After years of the U.S. government trying (and failing) to deport him, he got a couple of items from Tiffany & Co., that proud American jeweler: an American flag and an expensive watch with the jeweler’s name right on the dial. “I’m here to stay,” the items seemed to say. If only that could’ve been true.
Hodinkee
