The Lost Eggs — Eight Imperial Eggs Still Missing

Eight of the fifty Imperial eggs are still missing, scattered or destroyed sometime in the chaos of the revolution and the Soviet decades that followed. The best story to come out of that gap belongs to a scrap-metal dealer in the American Midwest, who discovered in 2014 -- after already buying it for its gold weight -- that the ornament on his kitchen counter was the long-lost Third Imperial Egg, since valued at more than $33 million. It's the kind of find that keeps collectors checking flea markets: the other seven are out there somewhere too.