Hunting For John Lennon's Patek Philippe With Writer Jay Fielden | House of Craft

I must say that when I see all the faces I know now why I didn't retire because how can anybody retire from a passion I don't know our economy and the gender inequality will catch up as a brand we better be prepared for that last time I saw you you were actually talking about watches that belong to your father yeah this is all your fault yeah you guys I said it in the video and my intro thanks for bringing it up but this is all your fault I didn't care about Watchers until you guys put all these videos gaming the algorithm pretty much yeah Jay fielden a real legend of New York media thank you so much for coming to the UBS House of craft how you doing this morning I'm great man thank you I don't know if I'm a legend but I tried to be to me and Ben Kimber and I know at least a few others on our team you certainly are so we appreciate you doing this we're here to talk about John Lennon's padic 2499 obviously the the excellent piece that you wrote In The New Yorker a few months ago but before that can we talk a little bit about your career in media and uh how watches interplay with it and how you came to just become interested in watches and how how that caused you to latch onto a story like John Lennon's 24.99 sure I would love nothing more than to talk about this no one else wants to um well okay so I I did start out as an editor at the New Yorker or a peon when I became an editor and then became an editor at Vogue and we launched this magazine called men's Vogue and it was around from 2006 to 2009 anyone ever see that magazine you remember um so it was kind of a precursor to a number of gentleman's magazines I guess I'll call them that are out now and that at that time we had this idea that we could write about things like watches bespoke clothes um wine rare cars and then overlay certain journalistic kind of interesting investigative stories as well so you know it was in some ways of kind of throwback to Esquire maybe of the 50s or 60s and then it had this new layering of of really looking at what is the greatest of things that exist not necessarily from a snob point of view it it it was about not money so to speak of course plenty of the things were expensive but nonetheless the the the real exercise editorially was to find things that were surprising and sometimes affordable but really good so this was 05 as I said I guess a people are covering watches to a certain extent in in traditional men's magazines but not really I mean I think it had been I think it had been forgotten and I think that you a lot of you would probably have that sense that it just wasn't a Hot Topic for for many years for some reason it had evaporated and then Ben and other people started write about started writing about watches online we we were doing it in print um and that's where it really started that was my first kind of I I liked watches before that I didn't know a lot about them I had never been to Switzerland I had never gone to you know what was then called sih I started doing that and I started to have to kind of keep track of not just watches but other interesting I would say connoisseurial world that would have been in been about unusual things whether it was again uh architecture and Furniture uh wine cars all these kind of Worlds and that's that's where it really started what sets watches apart for you as an as an interest I think I just found the story of watches and what happened as as a as a both a business story uh a story of fanaticism a story a rebirth a Renaissance of a of a of a subject that had kind of of course you all have heard the thing oh you know after the iPhone why does it need anybody need to watch after the I watch why does everybody you know all these kind things it's never everybody's going to give up on watches stupid they're you know they're like a vestigal organ or something like that so the fact that it not only that didn't happen but it exploded into one of the most I think you know subjects that exist today that um that is that has the enthusiast crowd that you know among men around I mean I I I don't I think in the past you would have said Enthusiast crowds were like guys who like 10 speeds or you know uh yeah maybe wine connoisseur or something like that but the fact that watches just kind of came this coalescing moment and and brought all kinds of people together around the globe that made me interested as a writer as well you're kind of talking about it here the growth of the market of collecting of appreciation for watches more generally these are all kind of abstract ideas though and I think something you said to me on the hinki radio Podcast that we did that that stuck with me is you called the the John lennin story kind of the quintessential story of watches of the past 15 20 years however long it's been uh can you kind of talk about what you meant by that before we get into the specifics of the story of this watch yeah well it relates to those things I was just saying like I I was looking for this thing where I began to see watches not just be a thing that was of interest to say People Like Us in this room but starting the subject starting to spill over into mainstream press when somebody gets held up for their patch in on R Rodeo driver rishard meal when somebody gets held up for their patch here in New York coming out of a restaurant you know people start to notice these things even if they have no interest in watches the same thing happened in wine around 0708 when you had this guy named Rudy kuraan fake a bunch of petruse bottles I don't know if you guys remember that but wine was having this huge moment everybody's getting into it again you know younger people all that it wasn't so stuffy and then suddenly this big thing happen happened that was a story that was in men's vog that J mcinery wrote so I'd been following things like that looking for those stories I had done a story in Town and Country when I had did that about this mysterious Mercedes called the K karelo 500k designed by a guy named karelo who was a big Grand Prix race car driver back in the 30s a German actually not an Italian Mercedes loved him they had him designed a one-off um car uh it had an amazing kind of History I won't go into it but then it just disappeared it somehow got to to to America and then no one knew what happened to it I got wind of it being in a junkyard near LAX which turned out to be true we wrote the story that was seven 8 10 years ago in about three weeks they're going to auction everything that was in that junkyard um at soube at the end of the month and I think that car will be in it so those kinds of uh you know Grail hunts were fascinating to me I I'd seen it in wine I'd somewhat seen it in cars in terms of like not just riding for the kenti but starting to find stories that will not only be interesting to the kente but now interesting to a big group of people who just want to know what is this thing why are patch Philips that cost $30,000 at a store that you can't get worth $180,000 on the street during covid right that was a story that your grandmother might be interested in reading so I was looking for the story that might start to you know May may be the beginning first an article and then maybe a book that would you know explain somewhat this this moment and that to me the lenen had a lot of those elements to it and the story of John Lennon and his2 2499 it really starts with a photo a photo that you learned was taken by famous rock photographer Bob gruin followed lennin and Yoko Ono around for years so maybe we'll start the story there and that's how it really starts for you and you kind of begin to on Earth and Trace the entire lineage and and Provence of the watch I approached it like a cold case and I I think that's what it is and you guys know that there's a number of cold cases in the watch World the some of them may may be just we know that they exist but we can't get to the Castro family so we don't know what those Rolexes really are but there are other ones that are true cold cases right the Picasso joerger the the linen watch the you know Moon watches of various one one or or another so I was interested in this idea just again the lore maybe Boyhood stuff about treasure finding things I was interested in the idea of like what makes something great why do we care what is the standard of a beautiful object uh establishing these ideas in words so that they're not just um they don't vanish in a generation um and I felt like that was that story so when I approached it like a cold case I had never really been an investigative reporter at all I had worked on a lot of pieces like that or or commissioned them but i' never done one myself and yet I was always very interested in you know the kind of All the President's Men approach to a story and um and I thought here's one that really it has some of those elements but it's in the set in the luxury world so I just started I you know with common sense people keep talking about this story it pops up all over the place whenever they whenever there's a you know a grouping of of little bullet pointed stories about the the the Lost watches that no one knows where they are whether it was in laf figuro or GQ or hinki or whatever and that was always a the picture that they showed and yet the picture never was uh credited which you know having been the editor of a number of magazines I know the danger of not crediting pictures and I thought that's something there why is this picture not credited if the story is what where is this watch and why why why did John lenon have it on I would think you just find out who took it and maybe that person would be able to say oh yeah I remember that you know so I just basically Tracked Down who took the picture and the way I did that was isolate you know the fact that everybody said it was his birthday I realized it at on his birthday in 1980 he was in the Hit Factory recording his last album therefore there would have been people at the Hit Factory I hoped who were still alive who would maybe remember who took that picture or they might have stories of them s so I called the producer of the of the album who's still alive a very interesting guy he was you know kind of a rock legend he he produced um all of AOS Smith's albums and um Cheap Trick and Blondie and a lot of Patty Smith Etc uh he never wanted to get on the phone with me but he would immediately email me back within two minutes if I ask him any questions so I sent in the picture and I said I'm just trying to find out who who took this picture two seconds later I got the thing back Bob gruin took that picture so I called Bob gruin and I you know it just went from there one of the things that I think makes this bigger than a watch story obviously is is John lenen the personality uh imagin no possessions right is is one of the most famous lyrics or lines he ever wrote and yet here you have Yoko Ono walking into Tiffany in 1980 for his birthday to buy a pek Philipe 24.99 perpetual calendar chronograph one of 349 made or whatever it is and I imagine one of the things for you that that had to be fun as a journalist was puzzling out what would have even attracted Yoko and and thereby lenon to such a luxurious item like that yes I mean I always thought that the story isn't just the story of where the watch is it's the story of of course it is that and and the story of how the watch got where it is and you know Etc but it was to me always the Curiosity of why does he have that I think that's why everybody was shocked whenever they see the picture you know if if in other words if you looked at mysterious the the whereabouts the mysterious whereabouts of various watches uh there are some that are more startling than others you know I mean the Picasso thing is kind of fascinating too because you don't really there don't think you associate him with that kind of thing but lenen for sure now the guy did have possessions clearly right he had a lot of apartments in in the Dakota he had Estates around in various places whether he wanted them or or Yoko wanted them I don't know but he had them uh he had a lot of brand muffins he had a lot of carob coated peanuts um you know he had stuff like that he liked Juke boxes he liked guitars uh he liked vitamins um and you know he had these kinds of things I but in terms of L what we would associate with as a luxury Mark of some kind I don't think that was his deal and and and you know he had a rollsroyce at one point I think probably more for marketing purposes than anything else it was later sold um I know when one of the assistants of his right before he was killed um was hired by him they were he was driving around in an old station wagon that you know would break down all the time he had to convince Yoko owner to buy a car and she wanted a Mercedes so they bought a Mercedes you know it was that kind of thing so and I think this also takes us back to a more Charming world where even if you were Rich you weren't really finding these kinds of status symbol objects especially by way of the luxury world the you know the conglomerate luxury world was one not so easy because there wasn't a thousand boutiques up and down Fifth Avenue that we all know by name now they're you know I can't tell you exactly what they were but I'm pretty sure there weren't that many there was Bergdorf Goodman and there was Tiffany and there were a few others you know maybe Gucci That was its first big moment in the 80s or the late 70s but you know just this town was not littered with with logo ised luxury products okay cars the whole thing it was a harder thing to get it was a harder thing to know to know what to get so that's one of the big mysteries about I people knew that Patek was a great brand but the 2499 I don't think so that would have been required a lot of knowledge about that watch also you know today we think of it as being impossible to find apparently when she walked into Tiffany there was one in the case you know so think about that and I got a extract from the catalog of 1984 from Tiffany in which that watch is a 2499 is advertised in the catalog um as you know being available in other words it's in the catalog it's it's not like we we're going to get it to you in 5 years and it's $25,000 right so interesting stuff the the the way Tiffany worked at the time I talked to them a lot there was I thought that was a fascinating part but I got interested in the idea of just like where do you develop that kind of taste where did it come from we take it so much for granted that that's just the way life is now that we all see these luxury objects and this is just you know the way people who had means always express it's not you know it's was strange and interesting and it was a more uh you know I think a time when you expressed your your taste a bit more individually because there wasn't as much stuff to just pile on you know and everybody to compete with each other the way that we compete with each other you know so it was fascinating to me that that that was a big part of the story I wanted to find out why she bought it and and I didn't even answer that question do you have it I mean look it's hard to get into the mind of anyone but do you have sort of a an answer to that or or prognostication at least I do I do I I I did talk to Sean Lennon he probably regrets it I don't I I hope he doesn't because I hope the piece was fair I don't think it was an ugly piece in any but he was very worried when we spoke about the piece not not you know in some way upsetting his mother when I tried to get a sense from him he just said you know my parents he's like you know I I I don't I don't have any interest in stuff like that I don't do any of that stuff you know I I never buy anything I don't like stuff like that you know um and my my parents were really not into stuff like that they they just you know uh and you know I could kind of see that era of New York where growing up a kid with a lot of money and just parents who just didn't really that's not what they did you know they didn't get into that kind of stuff I think nonetheless I think what happened my sense of it is and there's one one part that is in the story and there's one part that's not in the story she was around as many people of that era were and and women who were powerful and important and wellknown she had interesting friends who had who were what you might call men of taste you know men in the art world in the Antique World in the auction world uh who knew again going back to what I was saying about you didn't just go around the corner and buy a whole set of furniture from Boda Vena because you thought that would be really groovy and everybody would know like holy you're rich right you didn't do that there was no such thing so you had to have somebody either you were somebody who had integrated yourself enough into those types of Worlds when you had taste and all that and you were developing that stuff or you were you know having kind of the equivalent I I would say an interior decorator or those kinds of things be involved in your life and help you find interesting objects and things to collect that were worth the money and that wouldn't make you look silly I she was at the she had two very strong friendships at the time um one I mentioned in the piece which is a guy named Sam green who is a forgotten but fascinating figure he was he came came out of the he was a kind of a waspy guy um I mention wasp because it will help you understand why he was so beloved by Warhol because Warhol loved that type and um he had the kind of stratospheric Rise he by the age of 25 he had been made the head of the Contemporary Art Museum in Philadelphia he was very close to Warhol a number of artists in that kind of pop art kind of thing and and anyway he knew very powerful women he was very close to Dian Rand that the editor of Vogue at the time uh he had an affair with Barbara bakeland who was the arys to the bite Fortune he was very crazy he was very close to Yoko and he was really gretag Garbo's last um Walker he was he he went over to her house often and he spoke to her on the phone every day so he was an interesting guy and he's hanging out with Yoko right at the time that they're recording that album when when John gets the the the um the watch I track down his papers at the bin at Yale uh there's not a lot of boxes but what's in the boxes is fascinating including recordings of all the conversations he had with Garbo and he had checks to Tiffany uh that were in that period of time the 1979 1980 makes me think he was going to Tiffany he knew what was at Tiffany he's a prime suspect the other guy who's not in the the thing comes into Yoko on his life right when right after Lennon's death in a kind of the way it's portrayed in the Press is a bit todrey this guy shows up he's another of these guys who's you know had kind of shishi um uh antique store on the Upper East Side another shape shifting guy boyfriend has a boyfriend but Becomes Her live-in friend or whatever you want to call it I can't go beyond that but he's living with yokono soon after John lenon Dies he lives with her for the next 20 years um he's a strange guy he's now lives in Europe he's an artist you know painter um and he would never tell me anything except what I got wrong you know he tells me that I got everything wrong even though I know I didn't um but the reason I think he's interesting is that that the times did a couple of pieces on him because he he he was a guy who had enough of an art career that he was covered in the times and it does mention that his father was a watch maker and I think that that is very telling and that he could have been the one who said you know if you go over there and get a watch don't just get the Nautilus you know get this one or don't go get a Rolex get the pat somebody told her because she she was not wearing that kind of watch herself and it as you all probably would guess just like me there's no way somebody would have just you know come up with the idea of like I want a 2499 so these kind of lay lay the breadcrumbs for the story the photo Yoko buying the watch obviously but then Lennon Is tragically murdered in 1980 and for a while nothing comes of the watch no one really knows it even exists uh that all begins to change in the mid 2000s when Yoko as she's want to do kind of becomes part of something that the New York Times other tabloids reported on a lot uh in regards to a driver that she had for years uh one Carson I think I can't remember his first name but Carson carsan and he becomes sort of the first real bre breadcrumb that yeah Begins the the modern era of the story so can you sort of pick up the story there and and what we need to know about Mr Carson yeah his relationship with Yoko and with the watch yeah I can even help you understand a little bit because there's like these P there see they're about 15 10 to 20 year periods between the watches the watch's appearance in some form or fashion right so I get you know we have 1980 we know he's wearing it it's his birthday okay then what the next real appearance of the watch is 2005 when caran who's been by that time uh a a drive yoko's driver in bodyguard for 10 years so 1995 to 2005 so just keep this in your mics it's all kind of like you know helps you kind of see the progress of things where that watch might have been so in 2005 he's arrested 2006 he's arrested uh he's accused of extortion um uh involving her in which he um uh has has demanded that she pay him $2 million and he has a lot of complaints about why she owes him this money that he feels overworked and that he hasn't got paid overtime and um you know if he adds it all up that's what she owes him and he threatens apparently to kill her and sea if he won't pay if she won't pay the money and she promptly calls the cops and they arrest him there's not a trial um but it's reported on the times and it mentions you know this kind of crazy guy I mean guy who comes across kind of crazy um you know he reads a statement that says that she caused him great grief and that he was her lover as well as uh her chauffeur and Confidant and that he has ground down eight teeth as a result of her uh uh demands uh so um basically it doesn't go to trial he's allowed to to um plead guilty I believe and then he's he's basically told to leave the country he's Turkish and he goes back to Turkey so at that time again this is just something that happened nobody knows what anything else except there's a weird incident at the Dakota last night okay and um that so I knew that happened I knew that was fascinating I'd always heard that maybe this this driver I'd heard somebody again in the watch Ro say stuff like when I asked these questions yeah I heard it was a driver maybe stole it or this or that so when I saw that I knew okay this is something weird going on so the next point at which the watch appears is not I mean you have to go a lot of forward to go back but it appears in 2017 excuse me 2017 um when a company called auctionata goes bankrupt and this is a an auction house that was in Berlin um very much a darling of the dot era that had started in 2013 2014 uh a lot of big uh companies had funded it including Arno Hurst hold sprink you know it had like about 100 million bucks of of venture capital they had a good idea they were going to do what basically s the bees and Christies were doing now they just were going to do it way way before anybody could you know was was would trust that kind of system and before they could really develop enough of inventory to to have daily auctions online but they had a good idea clearly um I think they were under a lot of pressure so the point is something they go bankrupt and I read a German document after reading those New York Times documents in ' 05 I read some German documents in 2017 of this coverage of auction autoing bankrupt and which things are found of Beatles memorabilia and they just mention a watch which had been sold previously so I kind of start following that and that allows me to build the story back to 05 and what happens is I figure out that caran says he was given the watch he has the watch for a year when this this incident happens in ' 06 when he blows up with yokono when he's told to leave the country he not only takes the watch with him but he takes the rest of the stuff that becomes the memorabilia that's found at auctionata diaries that John lenon kept in the last year of his life which are very by the way have been hunted by many many people and in fact a a book that was just about to be published 8 months ago by by a well-known writer the book was published it was supposedly in galile is ready to go out somebody swooped in there and killed that book because he had obviously had had gotten the same access that I had gotten to these Diaries they were photographed by auctionata just like the watch was photographed by auctionata so those Diaries are not they were returned I know I'm going everywhere the Diaries were eventually returned to yokoo not the watch because the watch had already been sold the Diaries were photographed by auctionata and that's why I guarantee you the reason that writer had the ability to write that book is that he somehow found the photo got the photographs from the auctionata um uh backlog in the same way that I found the picture of the watch from the backlog nobody owns it and it's just kind of floating around if you can find the right person you can find lots of interesting things in somebody's iPhone I want to get back to the watch in a second but you mentioned the diary photos uh did you see any anything from photos of the Diary uh of the pages in the diary or was that not your beat um I'm all over that man yeah anything interesting you want to share with uh with us right now I can't I can't and I I I don't even know if I can I don't know if I can do anything with it you know because this for that very reason it's it's highly uh you know go back to the JD Salinger thing why not huh should we talk about JD Salinger do you remember when they tried to do a biography of him right you know you you can't you can't just publish you can't find things and just publish them there's a copyright WR even to letters certainly Diaries but the Diaries have some very unflattering material in them I'll just say that about all the people who the others apparently the the other members of the band um Etc we'll stick to the watch for now then yeah let's stick to the watch Karan as you mentioned is deported goes back to Turkey and then we start to you start to pick up the trail of the watch from there it passes hands before it gets to auctionata so can you just talk a little bit about those links yeah I kind of jumped forward I was kind of so yes what happens is he goes to Turkey he's got this watch so keep in mind so he Le he leaves New York in ' 06 it's not until 09 that he decides that he might that this watch might be something that you know he can do he can get something out of I don't think he he was wearing this watch I don't I don't even know if he really knew what that watch was beyond the fact that it was John lenons I you know again we all have to assume that oh does this guy know what a 2499 is you know I don't I don't think so I mean I think he knew they had nice things but I I don't think he totally got that so I think he had this watch and he started to think okay well it's got this inscription that we all know about right that's never been found and that obviously uh is proof that because it's not been known it's proof of the watch's origin um so he has a friend who is a fellow Turk who lives in Berlin and at the time carsan apparently wants to buy a house and he doesn't have the money to put down for the house so he uh he asks his friend this is the way I understand it I would like to give you this watch um uh as collateral for a loan and the friend says sure I think he also gave the friend all the other stuff that he had the memorabilia so the Diaries and all that which were supposedly worth more than the watch uh at least that's what auction on thought um and the guy takes it all back to Berlin and so that's 09 so he hangs on to this stuff for about five years at some point he decides uh either maybe Caron's not paying him back or I don't know I can't get to the bottom of that he decides to take the watch to auctionata uh or Au he's he likes old cars and he runs across a guy who's at oata uh who's you know one of the heads of oata they get drunk together he mentions that he's got this watch the guy's you know eyes fall out of his head uh he says well why you have our you know why don't you at least find out what it's worth I'll have I'll put you in touch with my watch guy at auctionata that happens next thing you know it's it's be it's about it's going to be auctioned it's photographed for the auction uh they're getting excited but they don't have a Provence story correct right so they're like how are we going to sell this story how did this guy get this watch you know like we know that the inscriptions obviously we we're oh we let's do this let's get an extract from patch of course it'll say it's stolen if it's really stolen right so they kind of use that as an excuse then they have caran do a an affidavit swearing to the fact that he's been given this watch and that he would never lie about such a thing um and so anyway they get to a point where they're just scrambling trying to find a way to make the story hold together that this is the watch and it's not stolen um uh that the The Turk who has the watch aan G as he's called in the story um gets cold feet doesn't want to have it auctioned everybody knows Yoko Ono has the long arm of the law on her side I mean she is very good at suing people and so uh and and so they decide just to do it private treaty so the I know every byways and highways of the story are crazy right are you are you about to fall asleep um so the the the auctionata finds a private buyer a man named Mr a not the Mr that was here before I will confirm that we did have a Mr a he's also Italian though so I want to make sure you don't it's not him uh but a Mr a is who he's known as it's the way he's identified in this affid this court document that comes out we can talk about that in a second uh Mr a uh buys this watch He's reassured he feels as he told me that he didn't think the watch was stolen he thinks that he wasn't that he did that Carson did in fact you know was given to him as a gift so he buys the watch for €600,000 in 2014 and he takes the watch to Christies two months later even though he said he wouldn't apparently um and Christies does their due diligence and they call Yoko and she says what are you talking about that watch is in my house and they say no it's not and she says let me check and then she comes back and she says I want that watch back that's my watch and so it suddenly there's that's the beginning of the watch being put in limbo in Geneva uh it's supposedly in an in an escrow agreement between Mr A's lawyer and Christie's maybe somehow still involved they wouldn't talk about it and Yoko trying to get the watch and the Judgment uh were waiting and I think it could be any day um the the final decision is before The Supreme Court because it's been appealed a couple of times by Mr a um and it will be decided soon who is the what they say Sole and right only owner I believe which has been the prevailing judgment so far in all the cases but the the question then to me which is not in the story is how how do you get it back even so right we all know how hard those things are especially at Switzerland huh yeah and like you're in New York that's in Switzerland Mr a is in Italy the watch is in Switzerland and supposedly there is an agreement so and he did tell me yes I'll honor the agreement but the LA the last time I talked to him he said but we have a plan if they if they find that she's the right fler so I don't know what that means but uh do you have a feel for what happens at Christy's during that six months or so where they take the watch in uh and then figure out what's going on with it and then eventually uh the call is made to Yoko or Yoko finds out that that the watch is indeed not in her cupboard or locked away wherever but it's in Geneva and at Christie's do you have a feel for how they handled that situation or anything you didn't get into in the article two things two things that I think are just to keep in mind not only did she not know the watch was gone apparently and I number of people told me that but she hadn't known the watch hadn't been there since 1980 yeah okay so just check that out let me think about that for a second what else is in that Dakota apartment you know what I mean but because she had she had she had locked it away in 1981 she had an inventory of all Lenin's things taken in 1981 um results in like a thousand page document there mention of two watches in it one is a pocket watch one is a and I'm not saying this is the way to describe but I know pretty well that the two watches that are mentioned or a pocket watch a patch one that was was you some of you may have followed it it's been sold twice when once in the 80s and and recently it was resold again so a patch pocket watch and then this watch okay so um and then she puts it away in this room closet I'm not sure it's it's a room of some kind where she keeps these these kind of valuable things um it's it's locked this guy Carl Coral Carson was trusted enough to have a key to that room um and all I can figure is she never checked on the watch again uh for 34 years um maybe somebody else did worked for her maybe not I don't know but you know that's kind of a fascinating thing so Christy's I think just followed as as as well as if anyone here can tell me how things like this work at an auction house in Switzerland I'd love to know but you know I there are certain expectations they have for what they're going to do when they get pieces like this you know they have to establish the fact that it wasn't stolen I'll tell you this I know for a fact that if you do claim something is stolen you pretty much have to prove it or they will and I mean they Christies but an auction house will go ahead and sell that thing if you can't prove it you can't just call up and say that was mine you know you have to have a police report you have to have a you know a number of documents that that are serious enough for them to think it's real she had never reported it as being stolen because she didn't know it was stolen that's another reason we we would think she probably hadn't checked on it in many years if she had checked on it she would have known it wasn't there right and she would have called the cops and and said somebody stole this presumably it's insured I don't know but you know um so she didn't know it was stolen she then had to present them with some kind of believable case that that watch was stolen and not given away because this happens all the time paintings I'm sure many of you bid on things this is a typical problem auction houses have is proving uh or disproving people's claims of of ownership when it when it's when it's illegitimate and and vice versa so I know that they felt like they had documents that were made them believe that it was a believable case and then I think that that probably set something in motion that they can't stop I would imagine right there's got to be some series of legal uh things that you have to follow I I know this too that there is a position apparently I was unable to look into this but I found it interesting that each Auction House perhaps more at least has one perhaps more of a Swiss uh government official of some kind hired by the government to be kind of embedded As I understood it in these these these types of very these very types of situations as a kind of you know overseer of of of of how to navigate this kind of thing so I don't know if this I don't know what that person did in this case but I know that the watch was quickly you know put in escrow it was kept at Christies for the next um several years and it may still be there or it may be under the lock and key of Mr A's lawyer the reason I think the lawyer has some connection to it and this is kind of interesting I think is that this we have to talk about that document that we have to talk about the court document if I'm going to tell you about that because they won't they won't understand it I don't think well let's talk about how let's talk about how it all comes to a legal head so what happens is Mr a is the one that actually sues to try to make a legal claim to the watch right and that's how things come to a head about a year ago when first get the Swiss Court decision saying that Yoko Ono is indeed the rightful owner of this watch and not Mr a we're now waiting on the final appeals process is kind of where it stands but can you just sort of talk about that court document that you're referencing and and what that tells us a year a year ago a year ago uh so I'm reporting this story and I'm kind of you know think I'm the only I'm just alone you know with you know doing my thing and I pretty much have put together the the constellation of characters and the root and and a have it I don't have a way factually proving all the different stops and risks that this watch visits okay so at that time September I plan to meet Mr a in Italy I fly to Italy and he stands me up I get back two days later so it's right after Labor Day and a small website in Switzerland called Gotham city which basically digs through court documents in Switzerland for stuff like this you know stolen gems art controversies of various kinds clearly there are plenty um this young woman named Colleen ml uh finds this strange document that has been buried in the court uh docket I I don't even know what it is I'm not sure even how she found it because the Swiss courts don't don't you know they don't come out with their decis say here's a decision you know for the front page of the newspaper they just kind of put it somewhere that maybe can be found if you're really good at knowing how to look into court papers so she finds this thing after being on summer vacation she goes back and through the summer and she finds a document now this document that comes out from C because of of of Privacy Law every name entity uh litigant Etc Associated or named in the thing has been assoc has been given a letter as their identity as what they're a pseudonym kind of right so that's why I call him Mr a uh Yoko is Mrs C John Lennon is f okay that kind of stuff so you actually had to know something in order to even understand it truly it it's like a cryptogram you can't understand the court document I mean you read it too so you know it was hard you you had to already kind of know a little bit about it and it doesn't name the watch it doesn't say patch it doesn't say any of that stuff right so it's all very mysterious she knew enough that she thought this has something to do with Yoko Ono so she published this thing and basically what it was was the first decision in the court record that had been uh uh uh filed um and and it was the result of Mr a getting a trying to get ahead of her coming after him by him going after her so he sued her basically for ownership what that means go figure I don't know but the court found in her favor and he appeals it and that's why it's before The Supreme Court so my point was why did we bring that up because it was about oh yes so I was just going to say the only person no the only people identified in a document like that are the lawyers their names will be in there that's just kind of practice but Mr A's lawyer is not in there it's very strange very suspicious I think what it means means through the reporting that I got is that he's they're afraid that if they identify him he may be in Jeopardy of being robbed of the watch again because remember the estimates of the value and everybody can you know raise their hand and tell me whether they agree with this of of the watch is 20 to $40 million and that's a lot of money so I guess you don't want him walking around on the street in in Geneva or wherever he is knowing where he has the watch which I assume is not in his home safe um but that's that's the only reason that we can imagine that he his his he's an unknown part of the story the lawyer himself but that also seems to indicate that he does have it in locking key somewhere perhaps not uh perhaps not in his custody but he's the one that knows where it is and if and when this finally reach a res reaches a resolution you kind of hinted at it earlier we might not be at the Final Chapter yet here and for a watch that's been under under such scrutiny for 30 40 years now I can't imagine it would be a clean I got to keep you know would anybody read a book about this right maybe yeah no I think that there is a whole thing about like I say not only what's going to happen but then how how does it how does it happen that it gets from where it is now to where it's the court says it's supposed to go I don't know um and and there's lots of people who have skirted around in the dark peripheries of this story that I couldn't find or get to in time for the story in the New Yorker but are still there you know so I I feel like it's it's still got that episodic crime Thriller quality to it and plus the layering of each of these characters who get a hold of this watch are for the most part quite eccentric I mean like the guy who who was the Berlin Eran G made his money making uh shipping pallets like box you know like wooden shipping pallets so I mean just it's a Cohen Brothers moment every moment is like a Cohen Brothers movie you know there's there's some weird like fascinating uh personality at each each each step of the way you mentioned people on the periphery auction Specialists have been posting about the watch even I can imagine for any of them they're they're licking their chops this is a career moment the chance to sell yes John Lennon's watch perhaps the most valuable watch in the world it's been a few months now since the story uh published I'm wondering if you have uh if you have a feel for what's been happening in the past few months as far as like people circling the watch and hoping to potentially get their hands on it or or what might happen I think so I mean I've had a couple of conversations like that but I think they're just really waiting I think there's a frozen moment here you know what I mean where it now that that story is out there and that it's clear there's a decision that's going to be made which is is going to really I think establish whether the watch is in fact a stolen object or not a stolen object it will allow for you know I mean I would imagine if it does go to Mr a I can't see him not trying to auction it I really can't right so that would definitely be an opportunity do I see Yoko auctioning it she's not well she lives Upstate now she's you know basically not been seen uh um I don't think she needs the money I think I she's worth like $900 million or something like that apparently um yet she's she's very I think the reason she's worth that much is because she built what John had as his own fortune perhaps she's the one that built it I I can't say that enough but she was involved a lot in in building the licensing and a lot of the stuff that really created a a real fortune so she is a business-minded person uh would she she so in that way maybe she would and Sean doesn't seem to have any real interest in it I don't know the quote that's kind of a heartbreaking quote and is that part about you know like I would never wear anything that was my dad's I haven't even played one of his guitars I mean that there is a pathos to the story I would say that's the other thing that interested to me just as a last bit it it it there's something very sad and Mel colly about the whole thing the last years of John ly's life kind of being cooped up in that apartment finally comes out makes music this this watch what the watch represented as a maybe a Repro between you know the two of them in their relationship they'd had some rocky things to navigate it just it's all very mysterious and it all kind of is encapsulated in the caseback engraving which I had heard about but never seen until you posted the photo and then the caption uh in the story which is kind of how you end the story actually yeah because the story to me comes back to that that there there it does become what makes it really valuable I think to anyone who would ever own it is not just of course it's the four series PCH it's yellow gold it's all these things that you know don't make it the most valuable of the 2499 but it's obviously it was his I think it's pretty clear he was wearing it when he was shot that's something I kind of kind of feel fairly certain about um uh that means something you know that that's intense uh uh and then the the engraving which is the the quote from one of the songs in the album just like starting over as it says you know love Yoko so to me it's it's about it it represents its own sense of time and the sense of that that last few months they had together and you know that that's something more if you're interested in time as a metaphor it it's built into the object one of the biggest momento moris of all perhaps but I think that's a great place to end the conversation about John Lennon's 24.99 thanks again to Jay fielden for joining us thank you thank you