On November 10 and 11, 2021, Sotheby’s Geneva organized an exceptional auction of royal jewels and colored diamonds. The sale of the royal jewels far exceeded the estimates.
At the auction by Sotheby’s, a sapphire and diamond brooch and matching ear clips that belonged to the Russian imperial dynasty of the Romanovs were sold for nearly $900,000.
The jewelry, which belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Elder, the aunt of the last czar, Nicholas II, was smuggled out of Russia by British diplomat Albert Henry Stopford for safekeeping. During the revolution in 1917, the czar, his wife and their children were massacred.
“Dressed in a workman’s outfit, Stopford was sent to secretly retrieve the jewels from the Grand Duchess’ home, the 360-room Vladimir Palace. (…) He dismantled the jewelry, folding the pieces in old newspaper to protect them,” the auction house shares.
Sotheby’s said it was rare for jewelry with such “historic provenance” to be auctioned, and that “the appearance of these superb sapphire and diamond pieces has attracted interest from collectors around the world.”
A new buyer won the auction by spending 806,500 Swiss francs ($885,000) at the sale in Geneva. Estimates were in the range of $300,000 to $500,000.
Lire aussi > SOTHEBY’S GENEVA HOLDS AN AUCTION OF ROYAL JEWELS AND COLORED DIAMONDS
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