Overview
- The 1913 rock-crystal egg, designed by Alma Pihl for Tsar Nicholas II’s mother, realized $30.2 million including fees.
- Christie’s reported about three minutes of bidding before an unidentified buyer secured the lot.
- The hammer price topped a £20 million estimate and set the highest auction result for any Fabergé work.
- Only about 50 Imperial eggs were made, with roughly seven still privately owned, and no Imperial example had appeared at auction for more than 23 years.
- The egg was offered within a ‘princely collection’ of nearly 50 Fabergé objects and carries a provenance spanning Bolshevik-era sales, a Wartski purchase in the late 1920s, disappearance in 1975, and record-setting sales in 1994 and 2002.