An Imperial Fabergé Egg Breaks Record, Selling for £22.9 Million

On December 2, 2025, the Fabergé Winter Egg sold for £22,895,000, beating the world record for the sale price of a Fabergé egg. An anonymous bidder bought the egg during an auction located at Christie’s in London. As The New York Times states, Emperor Nicholas II commissioned The Fabergé Winter Egg for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. The egg was an Easter gift for a tradition that Alexander III started by giving his wife an egg each Easter. Inside every Imperial Fabergé egg, there is to be a surprise should it be opened. Each of the eggs were handmade with precious metal like diamonds, gold and complicated designs. This means it takes about one year to make each one. Alma Pihl made the Winter Egg in 1913. While she was working on figuring out how the egg would look, she observed the workshop windows and saw frost patterns like delicate frozen flowers forming on it. That sparked an inspiration which led to the creation of the Winter Egg with an icy design, capturing the beauty of winter. The base shows a block of melting ice, and the eggshell has a platinum snowflake pattern set. Inside, there is a hidden basket of quartz flowers, which is the surprise, symbolizing the transition to spring with beautiful wood anemones. Wood anemones bloom in the early-spring, representing the arrival of spring, hope, and life. Based on the information from Christie’s, the Fabergé Winter Egg has 4,508 rose-cut diamonds, containing 1,660 on the main egg shell, 360 on the base, and 1,378 on the surprise inside. All Fabergé eggs are extremely valuable, and the House of Fabergé made 50 of the Imperial Fabergé Eggs, though only 43 have survived the Roman Revolution as of right now, according to Christie’s. Most of them are in museums, and the rest are in private collections worldwide.