The Hunt for Million Dollar Fabergé Eggs (Lost Treasure Mystery)
Between 1885 and 1917 Peter Carl Fabergé,
a master goldsmith and the official jeweler of the Russian Imperial Court,
crafted potentially as many as 69 luxuriously jeweled Easter eggs for both the aristocracy and financial elite.
Known the world over for their association with the Russian Tsars,
as much as being a symbol of extravagant wealth, several are lost to history.
The mystery of what happened to the missing Fabergé eggs
has occupied the minds of treasure hunters for decades.
Tsar Alexander III commissioned the first Fabergé egg shortly before Easter 1885
as a gift for this occasion to his new wife Maria Feodorovna (born Dagmar of Denmark).
As was customary for Royalty of the time,
she has been married into a foreign dynasty to live with a man she hardly knew.
The Tsar had resolved that this gift would provide his homesick wife some happiness and material connection
to her homeland, since bejeweled eggs had also been customary to the Danish royal house.
The platinum egg Fabergé crafted opened to reveal a gold yolk, itself concealing a golden hen
and within this was a tiny diamond Russian Imperial Crown holding a yet tinier ruby pendant.
This so delighted the Tsarina that she was gifted a unique egg every year,
even becoming a family tradition continued by Alexander’s son, Tsar Nicholas II,
for his wife Alexandra as well as for Maria as dowager Empress.
Fabergé was given license to fashion lavishly ornate eggs,
each containing a surprise that was meaningful to its recipient.
Maria and Alexandra were the beneficiaries of 52 fabulously jewelled imperial eggs,
44 of which are accounted for and 8 were lost.
The 52 includes the ‘Constellation Tsarevich ’ and ‘Birch Karelia’, which Fabergé worked on in 1917,
but were never completed on account of the Russian Revolution.
Nicholas II was forced to abdicate and the rest, as they say, is history,
except part of that history has disappeared.
In fact, whilst the 8 eggs were listed as missing, .
we don’t actually know if some of them exist at all because 5 are not recorded after the Russian Revolution.
Following the revolution, the eggs, along with other imperial treasures,
were moved to the Kremlin Armory and, after economic decline in the 1920s and 30s,
many were sold abroad in exchange for foreign currency.
Accordingly, most of the eggs we know about are now held in museum collections in the USA,
UK, Germany and Switzerland; but 19 remain in Russia split between the Kremlin Armory and Fabergé Museum.
The fact that, before the modern era, the eggs were exhibited to the public only at the
1900 Paris World Exhibition and to Russians in Saint Petersburg in 1902,
no doubt reinforces the fascination they hold for us today.
But where are the missing eggs? Well we have an idea of where two of them are
– or at least where they were at a certain point in history.
One of these is the 1889 Necessaire Egg – last seen in London in 1949 and the 1888 Cherub with Chariot Egg
– said to have been exhibited at Lord and Taylor Department Store,
New York in 1934 when American Fabergé sales began in earnest. Potentially, it has a photo
from the 1902 exhibition – though partially obscured. As yet, neither has been found.
Wartski jewelers in London acquired the Necessaire Egg from the Bolsheviks
and it was displayed in November 1949 at their Regent Street premises
in the first ever Western exhibition devoted to Fabergé’s work.
It’s recorded as a fine gold egg, richly set with diamonds, cabochon rubies, diamonds,
a large colored diamond at top and a cabochon diamond at point.
Inside was an ornamental case set with diamonds. Three years later, on 19 June 1952 Wartski sold the egg
to a buyer identified on their ledgers, rather mysteriously, only as ‘A Stranger’ – for the sum of £1250.
The egg has never been seen again in public.
A potential clue to whereabouts of the Necessaire Egg turned up when a researcher,
scrolling through the pages of a leading online auction site, unexpectedly happened upon a listing
for ‘1920s Russian press clippings’ – including an image of the lost egg alongside other state treasures.
Despite the publicity surrounding the press cuttings depicting the egg,
the photograph hasn’t led to it being revealed in a hitherto unknown art collection.
Demonstrating the puzzle that is the missing Fabergé eggs, for others that are lost we have photos,
but no clues at all to their location. The Royal Danish egg was one of the largest and contained miniature portraits
of Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel – the parents of the egg’s beneficiary in 1903,
Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. Another photo belongs to the Alexander III Commemorative Egg.
The hen egg with sapphire pendant and mauve egg are also lost.
The fact that one of the eggs that was previously lost has turned up,
offers hope that the others may also miraculously reappear.
The discovery of the Third Imperial Egg is an incredible story.
Made of gold and encrusted with sapphires and diamonds (with a surprise watch inside),
it was found, entirely by chance, at a regular auction in the mid-west USA
having been lost for half a century following its sale by the Bolsheviks. The buyer purchased the egg for $14,000,
which must be the bargain of a lifetime – but he didn’t know its true worth at the time,
because he wanted to sell it on for the precious metal value and make a profit, but he found no buyer.
The intrinsic worth of the egg’s constituent parts is of course outmatched by the value of its craftsmanship.
Fortunately for the art world - and his bank account – having searched for an old
catalogue photo of his egg online, he decided to contact a Fabergé expert for an opinion,
who confirmed it was indeed one of the fabled lost Fabergé eggs.
In 2014 The Third Imperial Egg reportedly sold for an eye watering $30 million.
The whereabouts of the remaining lost eggs remains an enigma.
But the history of the eggs offers some possible clues.
One of which is that they were destroyed in the chaos of the Russian Revolution, for we know that the Bolsheviks
melted down much of Fabergé’s works of silver and jewelry to exchange for currency.
An equally unrewarding outcome is the prospect that, like the Third Imperial Egg
– they were traded and sold in conventional art markets, only to be bought by someone
who didn’t do their research and had them melted down for scrap.
The alternative is a much more rewarding idea – the hope that one day an auction
will unexpectedly offer one of the missing eggs and someone will, at the very same time,
solve a great mystery and find themselves a fabulously valuable treasure.
It’s remarkable that the 1913 Winter Egg was allegedly kept in a garage for over 20 years by a private collector
before being discovered by the man’s heirs and sold at auction for millions of dollars.
So if you can find one too, you will certainly improve your bank balance!