The gold-plated pocket watch was sold for a record-breaking $1.5 millionPA Images/Getty ImagesA gold pocket watch owned by Titanic's richest passenger sold at auction for around $1.5 million.The sale is the highest price ever paid for an item of Titanic memorabilia.The watch was owned by John Jacob Astor IV, a businessman who died when the ship sank in 1912.A gold pocket watch that belonged to the richest man on the Titanic has sold at auction for a record-breaking £1.175 million, which is roughly $1.5 million.The watch was sold on Saturday to a private collector in the US by Henry Aldridge & Son, an auction house in Devizes, Wiltshire, South West England."Thank you to all of our customers today in the room, online and on the telephone," a post on Henry Aldridge & Son's Instagram read, adding that the sale of the watch had fetched a "new house record."The watch had belonged to John Jacob Astor IV, a businessman and real estate developer who went down with the ship when it sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912."Astor is well known as the richest passenger aboard the R.M.S.