Bill Anderson was about 70 years old when he first saw the clock.
It looked like the wheel of a ship, a little kitsch decoration that you could see in a nautically thematic bar. But he was attracted to his creator.
Chelsea Clock Co. watches were recognized for their design and precision. The company's watches can be found once in the Navy battles during World War II, and adorned shelves, walls and desks in the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Anderson, a remote watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of Comet Chelsea, who was recorded with the initials “JFK”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Although watches collectors are obsessed with celebrity property, and a Camelot connection is very much, the perspective of a payment day was only part of the charm for Anderson.
Bill Anderson's retired watchmaker has more than 200 watches, including a Chelsea comet with a plate with a “JFK” engraving.
(Courtesy of Bill Anderson)
The mystery of the origin of the clock, could it be the real business? – He has encouraged his life for years. This, Anderson said: “It's a good game that I have here.”
He had bought the watch in 1999 from a seller on Ebay, a New Hampshire distributor who had collected it in a farm sale in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for $ 280.
In the intermediate years, Anderson, who is 95 years old, has covered the Claustered World of Clock Collectors. His hunt would take him to the online message boards of watches and clock fans, and the Library and Museum of the John F. Kennedy presidential library. Eventually it would lead to a refrigerated vault at 200 feet under the ground in an old limestone mine in the rural area of Pennsylvania.
Anderson cannot use the word “obsession” to describe your interest in your JFK watch, but others do. All those decades that have passed trying to discover its background history is evidence of its almost gravitational attraction.
Anderson, whose parents directed a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Oregon, south of Eugene. At the end of the 1940s, he left the University of Oregon after only a quarter and enrolled in a watchmaking school led by Elgin National Watch Co.
Anderson's maternal grandfather had been in commerce. “I leaned on the bank of his watchmaker and I saw him as a small child,” he explained. “He let me have the interior of a alarm clock … That was the beginning.”
Over time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewels and observe stores and sell their remaining inventories. On the way, Anderson married and began a family. He won a reputation as an honest corridor, and for being able to detect the value in the merchandise that others could not sell.
“Bill is like George Washington from People, you know, 'I can't tell a lie', such things,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who meets Anderson for about 40 years.
In 1974, Anderson paid $ 15,000 for the inventory of a jeweler in Baker City, Oregon, selling what he could and bringing leftovers home. Forty years later, he met them while cleaning his attic; Among the products was an old soccer helmet.
It turned out to be a rare back header from the beginning of 1900. It is not believed that there are still more than 10, and Anderson sold it for around $ 14,000.
He has preserved more than 200 watches for his collection, including several of Chelsea, and has seen the prices of celebrity -owned watches in recent decades.
The market of those with ties with the Kennedy is particularly strong. The Jacqueline Kennedy Cartier tank was sold for almost $ 380,000 in 2017, and Omega de JFK obtained $ 420,000 in 2005.
“With Kennedy you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Botros, who directs the United States surveillance business for Phillips, a London -based auction house.
Anderson knew that if he could confirm the property, it would be a blessing, perhaps an cornerstone for his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was contact Chelsea to request the certificate of origin of the clock.
When he arrived, the place for the name of the original buyer was marked “without registration.” Could it have been an extended courtesy to a VIP client? JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Mr., had visited the company's headquarters in Massachusetts, home of the Kennedy clan, where he bought several items.
Chelsea had published a function on his website on the master's master watchmaker Jean Yeo who touched that celebrity connection. She said she started working in Chelsea in 1951, an era in which “all the Kennedy arrived here” and the patriarch of the family specially praised, calling him a “good guy” that spoke with her about her work.
But Anderson wasn't sure what to think. The growing charm of watches with the history of list A was to attract people to sell doubtful watches.
In 2005, a rolex that was said to be a gift from Marilyn Monroe to Kennedy was auctioned for $ 120,000. The date of Gold Day, allegedly given by the actress to Kennedy in 1962 on the occasion of her 45th birthday, presented an inscription that said: “Jack / With Love as always / of / Marilyn.” But collectors and surveillance academics have noticed that the clock in question presented a serial number that came out with 1965.
At a time of his search, Anderson had a great advance when he discovered a photograph online of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned in a desk, and resembled Anderson's comet, but the low resolution image was so blurred that any engraving it could have had was impossible to discern.
Then-sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at home in Washington, DC, in 1954. A Chelsea comet clock is on the desk.
(Bettmann Archive)
James Archer Abbott, co -author of “Camelot Design: Kennedy's White House Restoration and her legacy,” he said that the kite was not exhibited in the White House, and warned that if it were important for the family, it would probably have been destined to the Kennedy presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy presidential library and museum said he has no record or information about the comet's clock.
But Tony Lachapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that he would have ever been owned by Kennedy.
“Could someone who had nothing better to do in his life to take that photo of JFK, Jackie and that watch, and get a comet watch and try to capitalize that? I guess they could,” he said. “We look [Anderson’s ] watch and look at that photo of [Kennedy’s clock] Sitting on the table, and in our opinion it is very likely ”they were the same.
Anderson tried to find the original high resolution image for years, but could not increase anything. No one seemed to know the source of the photo. There were tens of thousands of photos of Kennedy to comb online. Or more.
But finally, after a serpentine effort and several years, the whereabouts of the original negative was finally discovered. I was in a photo file stored within a Boyers installation, Pennsylvania, known as Iron Mountain, a formidable place that safely maintains records of all kinds, even for the federal government.
Bettman's archive, which includes millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is in a section of the mountain that has more than 10 floors underground.
Last year, a archivist located the negative and brought it to one of Bettman's laboratories, where he placed him on a platform scanner. Soon, a new ultra high version of the 1954 image shone on the screen of your computer. Clarity was remarkable.
The kite could be seen clearly in the photo, including the wooden base of the clock.
I was blank.
When he heard the news, transmitted by phone, Anderson shut up.
But he offered no regrets and then said he was not disappointed: “Not a bit.” He had realized how important it had been for him for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. He was 93 years old.
“She understood that I loved that kind of thing,” he said.
The investigation did a slightly easier dark time.
During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining room table, where there was a variety of photos of his wife. The comet was also there. He explained that during the last year or so, he has asked each of his five children to select watches from his collection that they will inherit when they die.
It is said that Marilyn Monroe, seen in a 1962 photograph, received President Kennedy a rolex that was later auctioned for $ 120,000.
(Cecil Stoughton / Photographs of the White House / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)
“I don't know how many miles I have more on the way,” he said.
But Anderson has not yet offered the kite. “Why that hasn't happened yet, I don't know,” he said.
One of his children, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who has Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Oregon, has an idea. “There is no doubt in my mind that wants to link [the clock] For JFK, he wants to believe that he was on his desk, “said young Anderson.” That is what drives it. “
After all these years, Anderson still loves persecution.
