MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) – A collection of personal items including letters of the Russian imperial family have been sold for $4.25 million, a Geneva auction house announced on Tuesday.
"The success of this sale is a demonstration of the huge interest in Russian items from before the Bolshevik Revolution," the director of the auction house, Bernard Piguet, told the Reuters news agency.
The seller and buyer of the bulk of the letters remain anonymous.
The collection of 230 letters belonging to Nicholas I’s sister, Olga, sold for $830,000 and contain details of imperial love affairs and matters of state, Reuters reported.
The letters, written in French, were taken from Germany by a US army captain during World War II and remained in an attic in Massachusetts for decades.
Two 66-cm (25 inch) tall porcelain vases given by Emperor Nicholas I to his sister-in-law the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna sold for $1.7 million apiece – several times over their appraised value.
The auction was held in the Hotel des Ventes auction house in Geneva, which has become a prominent outlet of Imperial Russian items.
