Jewelry

Russian Enamel Egg Necklace, ca. 1910

Appraisal: Russian Enamel Egg Necklace, ca. 1910

Transcript

GUEST: I was visiting in New York and we went to an antique shop, saw this and loved it. He said it was Fabergé eggs, which I was very leery of because I sort of thought, "No." And it was in the early '80s. We bought it for between $2,500 and $3,000.

APPRAISER: Well, it's a great piece of jewelry. Well, what we have here are a collection of eggs, and it was very common that in Russia for Easter, you would give an egg as a gift. It was a symbol of rebirth. Now, a lot of people think that all the Russian eggs they have are made exclusively by Fabergé, and a lot of other jewelers made them as well.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So I had a chance to go over these very closely and look at the hallmarks. They are all Russian, but unfortunately none of them are Fabergé.

GUEST: Is that right? Wow.

APPRAISER: But you have some beautiful enamel ones. This one's quite nice with the little gemstones, and this has the Russian symbol on it of the imperial house, so it's a nice collection. This necklace, if you had to go replace it, you're looking at somewhere in the $6,000 to $8,000 range.

GUEST: Okay, very good.

APPRAISER: Now, if it were Fabergé...

GUEST: They'd be...

APPRAISER: Quite a bit more, yeah, you'd be looking at more like $15,000 to $20,000.