Found any Faberge eggs recently? This guy did.

[Rain Man]

I love these treasure stories, and this one is amazing.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/worl...icle-1.1730527

Scrap metal dealer’s junk market purchase turns out to be $33 million Faberge egg



One man’s trash turned out to be Russia’s priceless treasure.

A scrap metal dealer from the Midwest had no idea that the tiny golden egg he was planning to melt down was actually a $33 million relic from the court of imperial Russia.

The unidentified man unknowingly hit the jackpot when he purchased the 3.2-inch egg at a junk market for a mere $14,000.

He jumped on the deal because he thought the egg was pretty little trinket. The egg stands on an elaborate gold pedestal, supported by lion paw feet. Three sapphires are embedded in the gold and when the man pushed the center diamond, the egg popped open to reveal a Vacheron Constantin watch.

The egg’s creator, royal jeweler Peter Carl Faberge, was known for designing these types of surprises. The former tsars and tsarinas of Russia had no need for more gold — what they wanted was craftsmanship. Tsar Alexander III asked Faberge to make one egg a year until his son, the next Tsar Nicholas II, ordered him to make two a year — one for his wife and one for his mother.

The eggs were created in the greatest secrecy, CNN reports. The royals' only demand was that the eggs contain a surprise.

"Their daily lives were lived at such a height of luxury that you couldn't really excite them with anything of intrinsic value. It was always about the craftsmanship. This is what that object is about, this craftsmanship and demonstration of skill. If you're not looking for it, you won't see it," Kieran McCarthy, director of London’s Wartski antique dealer.

The egg in question was Tsar Alexander III’s Easter gift to his wife, Maria Feodorovna in 1887. It left the hands of the royal family during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when his son Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. He and his family were later executed.

As Russia's rich rushed to the exits, treasures were sold off under Vladimir Lenin and his successor Josef Stalin as part of a policy known as "Treasures into Tractors".

By the time the egg reached the U.S. Midwest, it had lost its royal luster. Its buyer was betting that the egg would help him make a fast buck. But to his vast disappointment, the material value of the egg, jewels, and watch was just $500.

In desperation, the man turned to Google late one night and typed “egg” and the name engraved on the watch, “Vacheron Constantin.” He clicked on a Daily Telegraph article about a missing Faberge egg.

And there it was.

Faberge experts had spotted his egg in an auction house catalogue in 2011, setting off a desperate search. The catalogue was from a March 1964 sale in New York, when an egg with the same description was sold for $2,450.

Kieran McCarthy was quoted in the old article, talking about how much the royal relic could be worth. After hearing that, the man “couldn’t sleep; he couldn’t eat; he couldn’t think about anything else,” McCarthy said.

The man immediately boarded a plane to London.

McCarthy was sitting down for lunch when the man walked in.

"His mouth was dry with fear — he just couldn't talk. A man in jeans, trainers and a plaid shirt handed me pictures of the lost Imperial egg. I knew it was genuine," McCarthy said. "He was completely beside himself - he just couldn't believe the treasure that he had.”

The jeweler traveled to the man’s small Midwestern town and verified the phenomenal find.

The man "just can't believe his luck," McCarthy said. "It's almost an affirmation of his existence that this happened to him."

Faberge eggs are so rare that only royalty and billionaires can ever hope to handle them. 42 of the eggs have been purchased by private collectors and museums. Current owners include Queen Elizabeth and the Kremlin. Metals tycoon Viktor Vekselberg bought a collection of Imperial Faberge Easter Eggs for $90 million from the Forbes family in 2004. Eight, including the recently discovered egg, were thought to be lost.

McCarthy confirmed that an unidentified private collector had purchased the recovered egg. He could not reveal the identity of the man who found the artifact, its sale price or the collector, though he did say that the collector was not Russian.

The jeweler’s story remains unverified because the identities of everyone involved are still shrouded in mystery.

When questioned whether the story was perhaps too fantastic to be true, McCarthy said:

"We are antique dealers so we doubt everything but this story is so wonderful you couldn't really make it up — it is beyond fiction and in the legends of antique dealing, there is nothing quite like this."

The scale of the egg, shown next to a cupcake.