Rare Faberge Egg Sets Record

A rare enamel-and-gold Faberge egg sold for $18.5 million dollars, which according to the Christie auction house, it is the highest paid Faberge work of art and broke the record for Russian artwork, excluding paintings.

A little bit about Faberge Eggs:

Russian Czar Alexander III commissioned the first of the eggs from Peter Carl Faberge as an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria Fedorovna in 1885. The egg was an enameled egg with a gold yolk, gold hen, miniature diamond crown and ruby egg inside. The Czar was so impressed that he commissioned a new egg every Easter.

After the czar died in 1894, his son Nicholas continued the tradition until the Russian Revolution in 1917. Nicholas and his family were executed in 1918, thus ending the creation of the eggs.

Faberge created more than 50 eggs for Russia's imperial family, though not all survive.