Man Finds Million-Dollar Egg At Garage Sale

[icyfroth]

You hear about these sorts of things happening. Just never to you.

A person sees a painting at a garage sale, decides to buy it for $5 only to later discover it was painted by someone incredibly famous and worth more than they could have possibly imagined.

Same thing here — only with an egg. A scrap metal dealer in the Midwest stumbled upon an incredibly rare Faberge egg at a sale, the Daily Telegraph reports. The unidentified man, sensing the golden egg was worth considerably more than the $13,000 being asked, plucked down the cash.

It isn't often wise to pay $13,000 for an egg, but in this case, the man's risk was well rewarded. Turns out the piece of art is worth a whopping $33.3 million, according to the Daily Telegraph. Why? The egg was once owned by Russia's Tsar Alexander III and was seized during the Russian Revolution. It is one of only a few original Faberge eggs still known to exist.

Kieran McCarthy, the Faberge expert who verified the man's discovery, compared the find to "Indiana Jones finding the Lost Ark," according to the Daily Mail.

After the man bought the treasure, he did some online research and found a 2011 article seeking the whereabouts of the exact egg in his possession.

He sought out an expert opinion and -- voila -- instant retirement fund, and then some.

The last time the egg had been seen in public was in March 1902, according to Press Association's report.

From Here

I'd love to know the provenance of that egg, where it's been and how it finally came to sold at a garage sale.

Closest I ever came to an OMG was when I sold a dish I'd bought for $3 at the Salvos for $200. It was a swedish dish 🙂

[au.flaou]

[au.flaou]

I wish I could go back in time 😞

[au.flaou]

[au.flaou]

[au.flaou]

I like the simple starkness of the Red Cross Egg. It was commissioned during the First World War and Tsar Nicholas II felt an ostentatious egg, like those preceding it, would not send out the right message to his minions. The "surprise" are portraits of his Grand Duchess daughters who worked as nurses attending injured soliders, often near the Front.

[icyfroth]

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@au.flaou wrote:

I wish I could go back in time 😞

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I don't. I doubt I'd be one of the beautiful rich ppl. My luck, I'd probably be one of the serf's women grubbing for potatoes and baling hay with 10 hungry kids and paying a tithe to the rich ppl so they can buy golden eggs

[au.flaou]

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@icyfroth wrote:

I don't. I doubt I'd be one of the beautiful rich ppl. My luck, I'd probably be one of the serf's women grubbing for potatoes and baling hay with 10 hungry kids and paying a tithe to the rich ppl so they can buy golden eggs

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LOLLLLL That really did make me Laugh Out Loud. 😄 

I imagine you as a lady-in-waiting - now don't get upset, many of those ladies were Duchesses and Countessas - you might have been on the fringes of aristocracy in a past life... Yes... I can see it... You're not large so you would probably look quite flattering in a corset and triple row of natural pearls down to your waist. Ya think?

Malcolm Forbes and part of his collection:

[moaningmyrtle11]

[icyfroth]

every picture tells a story

[au.flaou]

I saw this item at the Armoury Museum in the Kremlin, Moscow. It wasn't nearly as impressive as in the photo. The glass was all scratched and dulled and several areas of the base were chipped, conspicuously so: