Bill Anderson had nearly 70 when he spotted the chronometer for the first time.
It looked like a ship, a kitsch decor you might see in a nautical theme bar. But he was attracted there because of his creator.
The Chelsea Clock Co. watches were renowned for their design and precision. The company’s clocks were able to be found on the Navy batteries during the Second World War, and adorned coats, walls and offices to the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Anderson, a retired watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of the Chelsea comet, which was engraved with the initials “JFK”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Although the collectors of watches obsessive about the property of celebrities, and a Camelot connection has for many, the prospect of a day of pay was only part of the attraction for Anderson.
The retired observer Bill Anderson has more than 200 watches, including a Chelsea comet with a plate featuring a “JFK” engraving.
(Thanks to Bill Anderson)
Could the mystery of the origin of the clock – could be the real deal? – Hot down his life for years. This Anderson said: “It’s a nice game I made here.”
He bought the clock in 1999 from a seller on Ebay, a Hampshire merchant who had picked him up during a estate sale in Wellesley, Mass., For $ 280.
In the years that followed, Anderson, who is 95, weighed the cloistered world of clock collectors. His hunting would take him to online electronic babillards of surveillance and clock aficionados, as well as the Library and Presidential Museum John F. Kennedy. This would ultimately cause a refrigerated safe at 200 feet under the ground in an old limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania.
Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Oregon, may not use the word “obsession” to describe his interest in his JFK clock, but others do it. All these decades that he spent trying to discover his background frame are proof of his almost gravitational appeal.
Anderson, whose parents led a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Oregon, south of Eugene. In the late 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 the trade. “I looked at the bench of his watchmaker and looked at him like a little boy,” he said. “He let me have the inside of an alarm clock … it was the beginning.”
Over time, Anderson has become a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell his remaining stocks. Along the way, Anderson got married and founded a family. He acquired a reputation as an honest broker – and to be able to identify the value of the goods that others could not sell.
“Bill is like People’s George Washington – you know,” I can’t lie “, this type of thing,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known 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 the remains home. Forty years later, he met them while cleaning his attic; Among the goods, there was an old football helmet.
He turned out to be a rare head harness in the Spalding in the early 1900s. It would not be more than 10 years old, and Anderson sold it for about $ 14,000.
He has kept more than 200 watches for his collection, including several of Chelsea, and has seen the prices of watches belonging to celebrities increase in recent decades.
The market for links with Kennedys is particularly strong. Jacqueline Kennedy’s Cartier Tank sold nearly $ 380,000 in 2017, and Omega from JFK obtained $ 420,000 in 2005.
“With Kennedy, you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Boutros, who runs US Watch for Phillips, an auction house based in London.
Anderson knew if he could confirm the property, it would be a boon – perhaps a cornerstone of his inheritance as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was to contact Chelsea to request the original certificate of the clock.
Upon arrival, the spot for the name of the original buyer was marked “without recording”. Could it have been a courtesy extended to a VIP client? JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., had visited the company’s headquarters in the Massachusetts – which houses the Kennedy clan – where he bought several articles.
Chelsea had published a functionality on his website about the inner master-horroge Jean Yeo who addressed this connection of celebrities. She said that she had started working in Chelsea in 1951, at a time when “all the Kennedys came here” and praised for the family patriarch, calling her a “nice guy” who told her about her work.
But Anderson didn’t know what to think. The growing attraction of watches with the history of the list encouraged people to peddle doubtful watches.
In 2005, a Rolex which would have been a gift from Marilyn Monroe to Kennedy was auctioned for $ 120,000. The golden date, allegedly given by the actress to Kennedy in 1962 on the occasion of her 45th anniversary, presented an inscription that is read as follows: “Jack / with love as always / since / Marilyn”. But collectors and academics noted that the watch in question presented a serial number which dated in 1965.
At one point in his research, Anderson made a breakthrough when he discovered an online photo of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned on an desk, and he looked like the comet of Anderson, but the low-resolution image was so blurred that any engraving that may have been impossible.
Then-sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at home in Washington, DC, in 1954. A clock from Chelsea Comet is on the desk.
(Bettmann Archive)
James Archer Abbott, co-author of “Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and his inheritance,” said that there was no trace of the comet having been displayed in the White House, and warned that if he was important for the family, he would probably have been assigned to the Kennedy presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said that he had no trace or any information on the comet’s clock.
But Tony Lachapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that it formerly belonged to Kennedy.
“Someone who had nothing better to do in his life could take this photo of JFK, Jackie and this clock, and get a comet clock and try to capitalize on this? I guess they could,” he said. “We look [Anderson’s ] clock and we look at this photo of [Kennedy’s clock] Sitting on the table, and in our opinion, it is very likely ”, they were one and 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 cross online. Or more.
But finally, after a serpentine effort, several efforts, the fate of the original negative was finally discovered. It was in a photo archive stored inside an establishment in Boyers, in Pennsylvania, known as Iron Mountain, a great place which safely maintains recordings of all types, including for the federal government.
The Bettmann archive, which includes millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is housed in a mountain section which is more than 10 floors underground.
Last year, an archivist located the negative and brought him to one of the Bettmann laboratories, where she placed it on a flat scanner. Soon, a new ultra-resolution version of the 1954 image shone on the screen of his computer. Clarity was remarkable.
The comet could be clearly seen on the photo, including the wooden base of the clock.
It was empty.
When he heard the news – relayed by phone – Anderson became silent.
But he offered no lamentation and later he said he was not disappointed: “Not a bit.” He had realized how important the hunt was for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. She was 93 years old.
“She understood that I liked this kind of thing,” he said.
The search made a dark moment a little easier.
During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining table, where there were a range of photos of his wife. The comet was there too. He explained that during the last year, he asked each of his five children to select clocks from his collection which they will inherit when his death.
Marilyn Monroe, a view of a 1962 photograph, would have offered President Kennedy a Rolex which was later sold at auction for $ 120,000.
(Cecil Stoughton / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)
“I don’t know how many more kilometers on the road I have,” he said.
But Anderson has not yet offered the comet. “Why hasn’t it happened yet, I don’t know,” he said.
One of his sons, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who owns Anderson Jewelers in Corvalis, Oregon, has an idea. “There is no doubt in my mind that he wants to link [the clock] For JFK – he wants to believe it was on his desk, “said young Anderson.” This is what motivates him. “”
After all these years, Anderson still loves pursuit.
