Help me understand how someone didn’t recognize that a Faberge egg was something unusual. Here’s the summary:
Fabergé Egg: An unsuspecting buyer purchased a rare Fabergé egg at a flea market for a small sum, intending to sell the accompanying gold for scrap. It was later identified as a missing Imperial Fabergé egg that once belonged to the Emperor of Russia and had been missing since 1902. It was valued at an astonishing $33 million.
But that’s not the story reported in Wikipedia. The buyer was a metal scrap dealer and recognized something as he paid $14,000 for it. He planned to resell it for its gold and jewel content. This was in the US Midwest.
This is a picture of storied egg. Would you think this is something to melt down for gold? What a failure of appreciation of workmanship. Is a scrap metal dealer the same as a gold and silver dealer? Would he have seen many pretty things and sold them off for their metal worth? And when he couldn’t get enough for it? Those purchasing must have been gold and silver dealers and they considered the price too high. Can you imagine being a gold and silver dealer and not knowing about Faberge eggs? Or quality of workmanship?
This is the Third Imperial egg. It has a solid 18K gold reeded case that rests on a gold annulus with waveform decorations. There is a variety of coloured gold alloys with matching sapphires. Each sapphire has a gold bow decorated with a series of tiny diamonds. And then there’s the large diamond on the front of the egg.
Wikipedia has a chart of the dates of ownership of the Egg. The egg’s whereabouts was unknown after the last location documented in 1964 with a sale at auction for $2,450 US. Then years passed and the next entry is in 2004 with the dealer purchasing it at the flea market.
The story of the rediscovery started with some research by Faberge experts that straightened out the identity of the egg that was the missing one. That was in 2011 with news coverage with headlines like “are you sitting on a fortune?” These started out as UK articles, but with the internet spread around the news feeds.
The Wikipedia entry says the dealer hung onto it as he wouldn’t sell it at a loss. He obviously saw these articles, recognized the egg was the same as what was in his possession. He flew to the London experts to tell his story and show pictures of the egg. The Faberge expert then flew to the US where there was no trouble authenticating the artifact. It made for quite the exciting reveal for the Faberge expert who is quoted as saying “it was like being Indiana Jones and finding the Lost Ark.”
The egg was purchased in April 2012 promptly after the authentication trip for 20 million pounds - $33 million US and is in private hands.
The scrap dealer’s identity remains anonymous and it is reported he was “petrified” of his identity becoming public.
The egg, in comparison, has made a number of splashy appearances in exhibitions since the sale with its first public appearance in 112 years in April 2014.
Would I ever like to make these living wreaths again - but alas, the wreath forms aren’t available, and I expect I’d have to pay a “fortune” now for all these wonderful succulents.
