Jackie Kennedy’s “Cursed” $380,000 Watch: How the Legendary Cartier Timepiece Ended Up with Kim Kardashian

Carole Radziwill has revealed the extraordinary story behind a Cartier watch that once belonged to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and was sold to Kim Kardashian for nearly $400,000 in 2017. According to Radziwill, she decided to part with the timepiece after a series of strange events convinced her that it might be “cursed,” People reports.

The 63-year-old writer and The Real Housewives of New York City star received the famous Cartier Tank watch as a 30th-birthday gift while she was married to Anthony Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s nephew. Anthony died of cancer in 1999.

The story of the watch began back in 1963, when Prince Stanislas Radziwill, Anthony’s father, gave it to Jackie Kennedy. He had an inscription engraved on the back: “Stas to Jackie, 23 Feb. 1963, 2:05–9:35,” commemorating their famous 50-mile hike in Palm Beach.

Over time, however, Carole began to feel that there was something ominous about the watch.

“There was something about this watch that connected all of us. Jackie Kennedy in the ’60s, me in the ’90s, and then my best friend in the 2010s,” Radziwill said on Haley Sacks’s Financial Tea podcast.

According to Radziwill, all three women who owned the timepiece became widows in their 30s.

“The curse was that three women owned this watch, and all three became widows in their 30s,” she explained.

Eventually, Radziwill decided to put the watch up for auction at Christie’s in 2017. She hoped Cartier itself would buy back the historic timepiece and return it to the brand.

“I had a feeling that owning this watch was a responsibility I no longer wanted to take on,” she admitted.

Radziwill also revealed that the idea of returning the watch to where it came from was partly inspired by the Indiana Jones films.

“I had this thought — I think I got it from an Indiana Jones movie — that if you return a cursed object to where it came from, the curse goes away,” she said.

At the same time, Carole stressed that she considers herself a rational person.

“I’m a very logical, rational person, but I also believe in the universe, and I understand that coincidence isn’t always just coincidence,” she added.

Cartier did make a bid for the watch, but at the very last moment, Kim Kardashian emerged as the winning bidder. According to Radziwill, the reality star swooped into the auction with the winning offer “at the very last second” of the three-minute bidding war.

Kardashian later confirmed that she had acquired the legendary accessory. In a 2019 interview with Vogue, she revealed that she had even worn the watch during a visit to the White House.

However, news that the “cursed” watch had ended up with Kim made Carole Radziwill nervous. Although she and Kardashian had never met personally, they had mutual acquaintances, and Radziwill began to worry that the story might somehow come back to haunt her.

“I thought the curse might come back to me,” she admitted.

Kardashian paid $379,500 for the watch. However, according to Radziwill, Kim eventually learned about the timepiece’s dark reputation as well.

Word of the watch’s alleged negative energy eventually reached Kardashian, and Radziwill claims that Kim ultimately returned it to Christie’s.

For some time, the watch was kept in a Christie’s vault beneath Rockefeller Center and then, according to Radziwill, eventually made its way back to Cartier.

In addition to Jackie Kennedy’s famous watch, Carole Radziwill also inherited another memorable piece connected to the Kennedy family — a Cartier toe ring. It had once been purchased by her cousin by marriage, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the wife of John F. Kennedy Jr. and a cousin of Anthony Radziwill.

For decades, the same family therefore preserved objects linked to the Kennedy legacy. But the legendary Cartier Tank ultimately traveled from Jackie Kennedy to Carole Radziwill and then to Kim Kardashian, leaving behind a mysterious tale of a watch that some believe may have been “cursed.”