The most expenisve clock sold at auction is the Rothschild Fabergé Clock Egg, which was made in 1902 by Peter Carl Fabergé. On 28 Nov 2007, this ornate timepiece sold for £8,980,500 (then $18,824,655) at Christies in London, UK, on 28 November 2007.
The clock has two spring barrels driving four gear-trains. The first powers the clock; the second the striking mechanism; the third set of gears power an elaborate gold enamelled cockerel that rises from a trapdoor in the top of the egg every hour, and moves as if to crow; the final gear train drives a tiny set of bellows that push air through a set of flutes, imitating the cockerel’s crow.
This clock is an example of a “Fabergé Egg”. These were highly ornate decorative pieces made by the House of Fabergé – a jeweler in St Petersburg, Russia – between 1885 and 1917. Most were designed by Peter Carl Fabergé (aka Karl Gustavovich Fabergé) and assembled by his “workmasters” Mikhail Perkhin and Henrik Wigström. They were masterpieces of the jeweler’s craft, requiring a year of work by highly skilled artisans and using only the finest materials (principally enameled gold and precious stones, but examples were made using cut-glass, jade and even finely turned wood).
The first was ordered by Tsar Alexander III as an easter present for his wife, and the Russian royal family would go on to be the primary customer for future examples (ordering 52 out of the approximately 69 made). Only eight of the eggs contained a clock movement, and the Rothschild Egg is one of only three with an automaton.
The Rothschild Egg is named for the person who commissioned it, Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild – a scion of the French branch of the wealthy Rothschild banking family. It was made as a gift for Germaine Halphen, to celebrate her engagement to Béatrice’s younger brother Édouard. It remained in the private collection of the Rothschild family, and was entirely unknown to Fabergé scholars until it went on sale in 2007. In 2014 it was donated to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.
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History of Auctioneering
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Source: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-expensive-guitar-sold-at-auction
A wall calendar featuring sketches of costume designs for characters from Alice in Wonderland was sold to an anonymous bidder for £36,000 (then US$57,848; €39,804) as part of a fundraising auction held in aid of the Muir Maxwell Trust and the Fettes Foundation (both UK). The auction took place at The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party held on The Queen’s Lawn at Fettes College, Edinburgh, UK on 3 July 2011.
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Source: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/82585-most-expensive-calendar-sold-at-auction
The most expensive tweet sold at auction is a tweet originally posted by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (USA), which sold as a nonfungible token (NFT) for $2,915,835 (£2,101,470 / €2,449,150), on 21 March 2021.
The tweet – which holds the Guinness World Records title of First tweet – was first posted in 21 March 2006 and simply reads “just setting up my twttr”. Proceeds of the auction were donated to charity.
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A baseball was sold at Guernsey’s auction house, New York City, USA for $3,054,000 (£1,874,655) including commission, to Todd McFarlane on 12 January 1999. The ball was the one that was hit by Mark McGwire of the St Louis Cardinals for his 70th and final home run in his record-setting season in 1998.
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The most expensive banknote sold at auction is an 1890 United States $1,000 Treasury Note, which sold for $3.29 million (£2.6 million) at Heritage Auctions (USA) on 10 January 2014.
The note is known as the “Grand Watermelon” note, due to the three prominent zeros on the reverse that resemble the fruit. The notes are extremely rare, and only three specimens are available to collectors.
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An armchair made by Irish-born designer Eileen Gray around 1917 to 1919 and belonging to Yves Saint Laurent (France), sold at auction for €21.9 million (then £19.4 million; US$28 million). The buyer, Cheska Vallois (France), was the same dealer who originally sold the chair to the French designer in the 1970s. The auction took place at Christie’s in Paris, France, on 24-26 February 2009.
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The most expensive camera sold at auction is a prototype Leica 35mm film camera, which was sold to a private collector from Asia for €2.40 million (£2.13 million; $2.95 million), at the WestLicht Photographica auction in Vienna, Austria, on 10 March 2018. The early model, known as the Leica 0-series No.122, was one of just 25 produced for testing in 1923 – two years before the first Leica camera went on sale to the public. The starting price was €400,000 (£356,000; $492,000).
The previous record holder was another Leica 0-series No.122 camera, which sold at the same auction house on 12 May 2012 for €2.16 million (£1.73 million; $2.8 million).
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The most expensive flag sold at auction is an American Revolutionary War Battleflag (1776–1779), which went to an anonymous buyer on 14 June 2006 for $12,336,000 (£6,707,264), including buyer’s premium, at Sotheby’s in New York, USA. The regimental standard of the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons was captured by British cavalry officer, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton at Pound Ridge, Westchester County, New York, USA, on 2 July 1779 and subsequently shipped to England, where it remained until it was put up for auction by one of his descendants. It is the earliest surviving American flag of any kind with a field of 13 red and white stripes.
The flag was one of four rare Revolutionary War battle flags sold at the auction: three other flags, from a Virginia regiment, thought to have been captured at the Battle of Waxhaws, near the border of North and South Carolina, on 29 May 1780, sold for $5.05 million.
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The most expensive hat sold at auction is a black felt bicorn hat that belonged to the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821). It sold for €1,932,000 (£1,687,119; $2,114,284) including premium at the Osenat auction house in Fontainebleau, France, on 19 November 2023.
The hat, which was estimated to sell at €600,000-800,000, was last owned by businessman Jean-Louis Noisiez, who died in 2022, and has now been purchased by an anonymous buyer. The final hammer price was likely higher than expected as a result of the pending release of a biopic film about the French emperor, directed by Ridley Scott, premiering in November 2023.
According to Osenat, the former French emperor owned 120 hats, yet only about 16 are known to still exist today. This particular bicorn was used by Bonaparte in the middle of the Empire, around the 1806–15 period.
Previously, the most expensive hat sold at auction was another formerly owned by Napoleon. It sold for €1,884,000 (£1,498,496; $2,348,594) on 15 November 2014, also at the Osenat auction house. It was sold by the Grimaldi family, the rulers of the Principality of Monaco, and purchased by an anonymous collector from South Korea.
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By 9 May1997, works of art by Pablo Picasso (Spain) had been sold at auction no fewer than 3,579 times. The total value of these sales has been £668,817,963.
Picasso was an artistic pioneer with a hand in every art movement of the century.
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