Mallorca: Germans find Patek Philippe luxury watch at sea

It was the most valuable object that amateur diver and treasure hunter Giorgio had ever found in and around Mallorca: a 63,000 franc price tag from the manufacturer Batek Philippe (Aquanaut Travel Time Model). In the summer of 2023 it slipped from a Dane’s wrist at sea. Now, ​​​​​​a year later, Giorgio found the luxury watch in sea grass ten meters deep, “Mallorca Zeitung” reports.

He told the newspaper that he had been underwater for a total of nine hours and was searching for the watch using a specially developed marking system for the complex case. Giorgio, a trained industrial designer, spends his spare time searching for lost wedding rings and keys with his girlfriend Caro – with some success, as documented on their Instagram page.

Because the lost watch was so remote—Dane had lost it on a boat trip far out to sea—Giorgio initially put the project on hold. But the customer didn’t give up: he wanted the watch back because it was so important to him as a family heirloom.

Finding the luxury watch was particularly difficult because the area in question had one and a half meters of thick sea grass, which made searching with a metal detector very difficult. Using a sophisticated system of pet bottles, Giorgio marked the relatively large search area where he had already checked.

The detector signaled several times, but each time it was a false alarm: Giorgio saw only cans or small pieces of metal. Finally the metal detector went off again, and indeed: the treasure hunter found a slightly rusty luxury watch encased in coral. The clock was still ticking.

“I freaked out with joy under the water and then I went straight to the surface to tell the good news to Dan, who wanted to remain anonymous,” says Giorgio to “Mallorca Zeitung”. The owner of the watch, who is usually a calm person, squealed with joy at the positive news. However, diver Giorgio was the first to recover his tagging system from the sea.