A scrap metal dealer at an American flea market bought a small golden egg on a lion-paw tripod, planning to melt it down. Nobody would pay scrap value, so it sat on his kitchen counter for years until a 2012 Google search revealed it was the lost 1887 Third Imperial Easter Egg, worth tens of millions. This episode traces the rise and fall of Peter Carl Fabergé and his workshop, beginning in the paranoid atmosphere of 1880s Russia, when Nihilists had assassinated Alexander II and sent the new imperial couple an Easter egg containing a dagger, two skulls, and a threat.

We open the first imperial egg, the 1885 Hen Egg, with its nested golden yolk, hen, crown, and ruby pendant, and explain how its success made Fabergé official supplier to the court with a mandate of one unique surprise every Easter, fifty eggs across two tsars. We explore the workmasters, the nerve-racking guilloche enamel process, the Danish Palaces and Peacock eggs, and Alma Pihl’s 1913 Winter Egg with its carved frost and thousands of diamonds. Then we watch the art reflect collapse: austere steel and wood eggs during World War I, two 1917 eggs never delivered, Bolshevik nationalization, Fabergé’s death in exile, Stalin forcing Agathon Fabergé to appraise the collection for sale, and the modern hunt that includes Malcolm Forbes, Viktor Vekselberg’s 100-million-dollar private purchase, and a Winter Egg auction of 23 million pounds.

• Why the egg tradition began as emotional relief for a terrified empress
• How a Rose Engine lathe and powdered glass create shimmering guilloche enamel
• Why private clients like Alexander Kelch got variations while the Romanovs got true originals
• The disconnect of commissioning Easter eggs while the population starved
• Six imperial eggs still missing, possibly sitting in an attic or thrift store