"Lost" Fabergé Egg Turns Up

[JewelFreak]

Occasionally I check the Wartski site for bling. News this time. The 3rd Fabergé egg, whereabouts unknown since 1922, one of the 8 (I think) thought to exist no more. Some story! I'm sure the last seller is depressed in a major way!





http://www.wartski.com/

 

[LoversKites]

Do you think its possible that they kept it off the market until the time they thought they could sell it for most profit? I'm loving the cute shell box there --bet it doesn't have a cute price!

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

 

[VapidLapid]

I Was hoping that you had found it

 

[alexah]

Amazing story! Here's a little more info on the scrap dealer that bought it at a midwestern flea market:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20140319/DACKV5D02.html

 

[boerumbiddy]

How many of us want to know exactly where this Midwestern flea market is?

 

[JewelFreak]

I Was hoping that you had found it

It was me, VL. I have a side business on weekends in London.

Can you imagine how the poor schmuck who sold it to the scrap guy feels? I'd want to hang myself!

I also wonder how it came to disappear out of Russia after 1922. It definitely was in gov't possession then & sometime between that time & 1964 ended up in the West, sold (by whom, we'll never know) in '64 by Sotheby's -- without its provenance, for $2450. Why didn't they pick up on what it was? We have to suppose some devoted Comrade decided to make a little personal (shudder) profit. Couldn't document the egg's origin without being sent to Siberia.

--- Laurie

 

[alexah]

Here's a little more info, taken from this article ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/10706025/The-20m-Faberge-egg-that-was-almost-sold-for-scrap.html ): "Seized by the Bolsheviks, it was last recorded in Moscow in 1922 when the Soviets decided to sell it as part of their ‘Treasures into Tractors’ policy.

In 2011, Fabergé researchers found the first proof that the egg survived into the middle of the 20th century: a picture in a 1964 catalogue for Parke Bernet, the New York auction house later acquired by Sotheby’s. It was described as a “Gold Watch in Egg-Form Case” and sold for £875 to a female buyer from the Deep South.

She died in the early 2000s, and her estate sold off. The egg, not believed to be of great value, found its way to the bric-a-brac market."

Edited to add that I can't believe it was almost melted down a few years ago - what a terrible crime that would have been!

 

[soberguy]

Am I the only one who thinks this, and any other piece, should be returned to the romanovs??

 

[JewelFreak]

Alexah, I almost melted myself when I read that melting it down (& selling sapphire, diamonds & watch separately, I hope) was considered. Good Gawd! I wonder about the other 7 eggs -- it's possible they are in someone's attic or some bric-a-brac shoppe.

Soberguy, which Romanovs? There are a gazillion descendants, none direct from Nicholas who would have inherited the egg. They have rumbled continually for almost 100 years as to who is the rightful head of the family, as it is. Good luck!

 

[aaronl]

Even before noting that I live in the midwest and have seen the typical offerings at flea markets, this type of story tends to strike me as suspicious. Yes, odd things happen, such as a long-lost Caravaggio found hanging in a kitchen, but I've heard a few too many stories about missing or stolen items being "purchased" at a garage sale, flea market, or other similar location, or these days "off of craigslist", and probably a few too many years around defendants in criminal cases, to view them with anything but a jaundiced eye. I also have a family member who, during earlier retirement, would shop garage sales and flea markets looking for bargains that he would sell in his own store, and even back in the 80's he commented that the typical seller would dramatically overvalue any bric-a-brac that looked valuable. Finding bargains is tough.

I find it very difficult to imagine a flea market where somebody has what they know to be a solid gold egg at their booth, and they know that the gold alone makes it worth five figures, but they're otherwise unaware of its value and expect that a passerby is going to pay them that kind of price. I also find it difficult to believe that a scrap metal dealer would see the item, gauge its weight, and assume that it was solid gold, then fork over $15,000 on the spot. Have stranger things happened? Probably, but not very often.

Without casting aspersions on the metal dealer in the story, if I heard a similar story from one of the metal dealers in the big city near me who has a reputation for turning a blind eye when thieves show up with loads of copper wire that they've stolen from abandoned buildings or construction sites, my thought would be that somebody stole the item from an estate and tried to sell it to the dealer for a quick buck and that the dealer, recognizing that the item was worth much more than its value as metal, sat on the purchase for long enough to be sure that nobody had reported the item stolen and that the statute of limitations had run on any effort by the estate to recover it.

Yes, you can call me cynical.

 

[JewelFreak]

That's a very interesting outlook. I hadn't thought of all that, but you do have a point. Swallowing every story whole isn't always the brightest thing to do.

 

[chrono]

I'm with Aaron; I tend to ponder the whys and how comes of stories, trying to gauge how plausible they are.

 

[minousbijoux]

I too agree with Aaroni; it just doesn't even seem that at least the flea markets I've been to that a price tag of $14,000 is in the realm of remotely possible...but it could be that I just go to the poor person's flea markets