Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Watch in a £5 Edward Vii gold coin

Have you check any of your gold coins? It maybe contain a gold watch, that bring us back to King Edward VIII time. A watch were found in a 1902 £5 Edward Vii gold coin and will be auction at Reeman Dansie’s Royal memorabilia sale in Colchester on 19 June 2012. The watch believe to be a love gift from King Edward VIII to his first mistress, Freda Dudley Ward, a married women in 1918. They meet for a first time  in a doorway in London’s Mayfair as they sheltered from a Zeppelin raid during the First World War. The Prince of Wales and Freda Dudley Ward were both 23 when they met in 1918, she had already been married for five years and had two daughters.

gold watch
Photo by Masons: Watch in a £5 Edward Vii gold coin

The wafer-thin watch was presented to Prince Edward when he opened the Scottish Motor Exhibition in 1927 and had it engraved with the initials ‘F’ and ‘D’, for his pet name David, and presented it to his secret lover. The watch has extremely thin 18-jewel movement by Stablis of Switzerland so it can actually be closed on a hinge inside the £5 coin. The watch concealed in a £5 gold coin that was a love gift from King Edward VIII to his first mistress is expected to sell at least for £15,000.

In 1934, The Prince of Wales broke off the relationship when he meet Wallis Simpson. He later bought a very similar £5 gold coin watch from Cartier for Wallis Simpson and that sold two years ago at Sotheby’s for £27,500.