A gold pocket watch belonging to one of the Titanic’s most renowned passengers has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount. The watch, which was given to Isidor Straus by his wife, Ida, for his 43rd birthday, sold at the Henry Aldridge and Son auction house in Devizes, south-west England, for $2.3 million on Saturday, making it the highest price paid for a piece of Titanic memorabilia. The couple is known for offering up their seats on a lifeboat once the ship had struck an iceberg. After Sidor Straus insisted that he should be given to younger men, and Ida Straus followed him, saying, “Where you go, I go,” reported CBS News. The pair was portrayed in James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic as the elderly couple embracing in bed as water filled up their cabin. Before traveling on the doomed ship in April 1912, Isidor Sraus was a partner in the New York department store Macy’s. He and his wife were among the relatively few first-class passengers who died when the ship sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. The 18-carat gold watch beat the previous Titanic memorabilia auction record by around $300,000.
Read it at CBS News
