Take a look at the clock that auctioned at Sotheby's for a record $6,802,500 on Tuesday, Dec. 4. It's the Duc d'Orleans Breguet Sympathique clock dated 1835. Notice the pocket watch mounted above the clock. Sotheby's calls the clock "a unique and highly important ormolu-mounted red tortoiseshell boulle-style Royal Sympathique quarter-striking clock and half-quarter repeating gold watch." It's named "Duc d'Orleans" after its patron and has the most complex Sympathique mechanism of all known examples: it is the only one known to wind, set time, and regulate its accompanying pocket watch via the cradle mounted onto the clock's pediment. The clock, which has been restored by an expert, was once in the collection of the Time Museum in Rockford, Ill. The Duc d'Orleans carries an estimate in excess of $5 million. It was last offered at auction in Sotheby's 1999 sale of clocks from the Time Museum. It sold then for $5,777,500, the auction record for a clock until Dec. 4.

Photo: Sotheby's