Bill Anderson was close to 70 when he first discovered the clock.
It looks like the wheels of a boat, and some cheesy decorations you might see in a nautical themed bar. But he was attracted to it because of its manufacturer.
Chelsea Clock Co., Ltd.’s watches are known for their design and accuracy. The company's clock was found on naval battleships during World War II and decorated with racks, walls and desks in the White House for the president to go to Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Anderson is a retired watchmaker and collector who is particularly interested in the base of Chelsea Comet, which has the abbreviation “jfk” engraved on it
John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
While it’s important to watch collectors’ obsession with celebrity ownership and the camel’s connection, the payday prospect is only part of Anderson’s charm.
Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson has more than 200 clocks, including a Chelsea Comet with a “Kennedy” engraving plaque.
(Contributed by Bill Anderson)
The Secret of the Clock Source – Could this be a real deal? – Filled his life with animation over the years. “This is a good game I'm going to go here,” Anderson said.
He bought the clock from a seller on eBay in 1999, and the New Hampshire dealer bought the time for $280 in a real estate sale in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
In the following years Anderson, 95, was placed in the seclusion world of the bell collectors. His hunting takes him to the online message boards of watches and bells, as well as John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Library and Museum. It will eventually lead to a refrigeration storage below 200 feet below ground in rural Pennsylvania.
Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Oregon, probably won’t use the term “obsession” to describe his interest in Kennedy clocks, while others do. He spent decades trying to reveal its backstory, which proved its almost gravity.
Anderson's parents ran a grocery store and grew up in Roseburg, Oregon, south of Eugene. In the late 1940s, he left the University of Oregon just a quarter later and attended a watchmaking school run by Elgin National Watch Co..
Anderson's grandfather has been trading. “I leaned on his watchmaker's bench and looked at him as a little boy,” he explained. “He let me have the inside of the alarm clock…that's where it started.”
Over time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell its remaining inventory. Along the way, Anderson got married and started a family. He has earned a reputation as an honest broker – and was able to discover the value in goods that others cannot sell.
“Bill is like George Washington of people – you know, 'I can't lie,' that kind of thing.” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known Anderson for 40 years.
In 1974, Anderson paid $15,000 for inventory from a jeweler in Baker City, Oregon, to sell his possibilities and bring home the leftovers. Forty years later, he encountered them while cleaning the attic. Among the merchandise, there is an old football helmet.
It turned out to be a rare mercerated seat belt from the early 1900s. More than 10 quantities are believed to still exist, and Anderson sold it for about $14,000.
He keeps a collection of more than 200 clocks, including several from Chelsea and watches the prices of timepieces that celebrities have owned over the past few decades.
The market for those with connections to Kennedys is particularly strong. Jacqueline Kennedy's Cartier Tank sold for nearly $380,000 in 2017, while JFK's Omega received $420,000 in 2005.
“With Kennedy, you get the highest multiplication factor for any politician,” said Paul Boutros, who runs the business of Phillips Overwatch, an auction house in the United States.
Anderson knows whether he can confirm ownership, which will be a boon, perhaps a block of his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was get in touch with Chelsea and ask for a certificate of origin for the clock.
When it arrives, the location of the original buyer's name is marked “No record”. Could this be a polite way to extend it to VIP customers? Kennedy’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., visited the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts (home of the Kennedy family), and he purchased several items.
Chelsea posted on its website about the feature of the in-house watchmaker Jean Yeo, a feature on the celebrity’s connections. She said she started working at Chelsea in 1951 when “all Kennedys came here” and praised the family's patriarch, calling him a “good guy” and talking to her about her work.
But Anderson wasn't sure what to think. The growing charm of watches with a Class A history is attracting people to peddling questionable timepieces.
In 2005, it was said that Marilyn Monroe's gift to Kennedy was auctioned for $120,000. The actress allegedly sent Kennedy the golden date to Kennedy on her 45th birthday in 1962, with the inscription written on it, which read: “Jack / with Love as always / and / Marilyn. But collectors and viewing scholars point out that the serial number of the clock in question is 1965.
At one point in the search, Anderson made a breakthrough when he discovered online photos of the future president and his wife in 1954. The clock sits on the table and looks like Anderson's comet, but the low resolution photos are so blurry that any carving of carvings may be impossible to distinguish.
It was a gift at that time. John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline were at their home in Washington, D.C. in 1954. Chelsea Comet Bell sits on the table.
(Bettmann Archives)
James Archer Abbott, co-author of Design Camelot: Kennedy’s White House Restoration and Its Legacy, said there was no record of the comet’s display at the White House, warning that if it was important to the family, it would likely be dedicated to Kennedy’s presidential library. Representatives of the Presidential Library and Museum of John F. Kennedy said it had no records or information about the comet clock.
But Chelsea president Tony Lachapelle is willing to be owned by Kennedy once.
“A person who hasn't done a better job in his life can take pictures of Kennedy, Jackie and that clock and get a comet clock and try to take advantage of that? I think they can.” “We look at it.” [Anderson’s ] Clock, let's look at that photo [Kennedy’s clock] Sitting at the table, we thought it was probably the same thing.
Anderson tried to find the original high-resolution image over the years, but couldn't adjust anything. No one seems to know where the photo is from. There are thousands of Kennedy photos that can be groomed online. Or more.
But in the end, after years of serpentine efforts, the original negative whereabouts were finally discovered. It is in a photo archive stored in the Pennsylvania Boyers, the facility is called Iron Mountain, a powerful place to safely maintain all types of records, including the federal government.
The Bettmann Archive consists of millions of photos and is managed by Getty images, located in a mountainous area above 10 floors underground.
Last year, an archivist found the negative and took it to one of Bateman’s labs where she placed it on a flatbed scanner. Soon, a new ultra-high resolution version of the 1954 image glowed on her computer screen. The clarity is excellent.
Comets can be clearly seen in the photos, including the wooden base of the clock.
It is blank.
When he heard the news – delivered by phone – Anderson became quiet.
But he didn't lament, and later he said he wasn't disappointed: “Little by little.” He would realize how important hunting is to him, especially after his wife Sallie died in July 2023. She is 93 years old.
“She knew I liked this kind of thing,” he said.
This research makes dark times easier.
In a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining table, where there was a series of photos of his wife. The comet is there too. He explained that over the past year or so, he asked each of his five children to choose from his collection the clock they would inherit when they die.
Marilyn Monroe saw in 1962 photos that President Kennedy was said to be the Roalx, which was later auctioned for $120,000.
(Cecil Stotton/White House Photos/John Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/AP)
“I don't know how many miles I have,” he said.
But Anderson has not provided the comet yet. He said, “Why that hasn't happened yet, I don't know.”
One of his sons, Mike Anderson, is a watchmaker, owned Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Oregon, and had an idea. “No doubt he wants to link [the clock] To Kennedy International Airport – He wanted to believe that was on his desk,” Anderson's young Anderson said. “That's what drives him. ”
Anderson still likes chasing over the years.