Platter with the cipher of Czar Nicholas II, €9000 (£7760) at Düsseldorfer Auktionshaus.
These presentation platters (this one with the silver cipher of Nicholas II and a Cyrillic inscription dated 1914) were given to the tsar when offered the traditional greeting of bread and salt during a royal progress to the regions.
Many were once displayed in the Winter Palace and the Kremlin but were dispersed – typically sold to Western dealers in return for hard currency – during the Soviet era.
One recently took £8000 at Moore Allen & Innocent in Cirencester (it had earlier ‘sold’ at £15,000 to a bidder who failed to pay).
This Düsseldorf example, the legacy of a local collector, was given an estimate of €800 but sold to a French bidder at €9000 (£7760).
