Is there a forgotten luxury treasure hidden in your home?

Luxury auctions at Christie’s are thriving. In 2025, the category — which includes jewellery, handbags and accessories, watches, wine and spirits — was the main entry point for Christie’s new buyers, and achieved a combined total of $795 million.

‘Our diverse and relevant offering has continued to attract a new, younger set of buyers, especially in luxury sales and notably among our clients from the Asia-Pacific region,’ says Rahul Kadakia, head of Global Luxury.

Prospective luxury clients can request a complimentary estimate of their property — provided it meets the minimum consignment value — through our digital or in-person channels, including telephone, Instagram or the Online Request an Estimate service. The process is simple and accessible, with Christie’s offering expert guidance through the entire valuations and selling journey.

Ahead of a new season of Luxury sales, we asked our network of global specialists in jewellery, handbags, wine and watches to share some of the most memorable items to have been valued and then consigned for sale by clients previously unknown to Christie’s.

Noah May, head of Wine and Spirits, London

In 2021, an out-of-the-blue telephone call from ‘a couple who didn’t really drink anymore’ led Noah May, head of Christie’s Wine and Spirits department in London, to one of his greatest discoveries: an incredible wine cellar that had remained untouched for decades.

The bottles were located in a former air-raid shelter only accessible through a thick hedge at the end of a garden in southern England. The owner, who was in her eighties, told May that she was worried about perishing labels and dusty conditions, warning him not to get too excited.

As May descended a staircase, the torchlight of his phone revealed cases of Krug champagne from 1955, Quinta do Noval port from 1931, and various vintages of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, La Tâche, and Grands-Echézeaux. There were even eight bottles of Mouton Rothschild 1945, ‘arguably the greatest Bordeaux ever made’. As May puts it, ‘I felt like a poker player holding a royal flush.’

The specialist continues: ‘It took a long time to bring it all to the surface, and even longer to convince our host that the stained labels weren’t really an issue — the cellar had, in fact, provided the perfect conditions for storing wine.’

The contents were offered in December 2021 in London, under the title Treasures from a Rediscovered Chalk Cellar. Every single lot sold, realising a total of £3,556,396 — more than double the combined low estimate, and breaking several world records in the process.

Max Fawcett, global head of Jewellery

Christie’s has handled some of the most magnificent gemstones in the world. ‘But the discoveries are the most exciting of all,’ says Max Fawcett, global head of Jewellery. On the three occasions outlined below, unforeseen valuation requests resulted in the unearthing of long-forgotten treasures.

In 2007, a lady unknown to Christie’s called the London Jewellery department after having seen a Valuations advertisement in a newspaper. She said she had a diamond ring that had been hidden away in a drawer for the past 50 years. She had absolutely no idea where it had come from or if it was of any value.

Intrigued by the description of the ring, a senior specialist went to visit her in Scotland. ‘She lived in a very modest house,’ recalls Fawcett. The specialist inspected the diamond and realised immediately that it was something special. ‘It turned out to be an exceptional fancy greyish-blue diamond weighing 7.81 carats,’ says Fawcett. ‘The client didn’t believe us when we put a £300,000-400,000 estimate on it.’

The department took the diamond in for sale, and when it was offered at auction it sold for £2,596,000, more than six times the high estimate. ‘Of course, she was thrilled with the result, but she wished she had called us sooner,’ says Fawcett. ‘It’s so easy to call for a free valuation that you should do it straight away — you never know what treasure you might have sitting in the back of your wardrobe or up in the attic.’

Ten years later, the London department received another call, this time from a gentleman requesting a probate valuation of old family jewels that had belonged to his grandparents. ‘He sent over boxes and boxes of gold trinkets,’ recalls Fawcett. At first, the collection appeared to contain nothing of any real value. ‘But then we found this tiny, scrunched-up piece of tissue paper, inside which was a beautiful old cushion-cut blue diamond.’ It had a note with it, which read ‘coloured diamond, £65,000 from 1965’.

‘The client was as surprised as we were and agreed to have it sent immediately to the Gemological Institute of America,’ says Fawcett. ‘It came back as a 7.97-carat fancy intense blue, and we knew then that it was going to be the top lot of the sale.’ Estimated at CHF 2,500,000-3,500,000, when the diamond was offered at Christie’s in Geneva in 2017, it realised CHF 12,527,500 (around $16 million). ‘There’s always going to be a lot of interest in something that’s still in its original old-cut form. The shape was beautiful and the colour was amazing,’ says Fawcett. ‘I remember the moment we called the client to tell him about the final price, and there was no reply. We thought he had fallen off his chair he was in such a state of shock.’

Around the same time, a client unknown to Christie’s walked into the office in Belgium and said they had a ruby and diamond brooch that they’d bought many years ago. The client didn’t know anything about its history or provenance, so was keen to get it valued. ‘It was a beautiful little piece,’ recalls Fawcett, adding that it came in a box with a royal emboss on the front. ‘We estimated it at CHF 50,000 and took it in for sale.’ During the cataloguing process, however, more information about the brooch came to light. ‘I remember one of the departmental interns coming in one morning, super-excited to show us a picture he had unearthed of the auction of the French crown jewels at the Louvre in 1887,’ says Fawcett. ‘Visible in the picture were a pair of ruby and diamond earrings and a matching pendant designed by Paul-Nicolas Ménière.’

The department conducted further research and discovered that Maison Boin-Taburet had acquired the ruby and diamond earrings together with their matching pendant at the 1887 auction, and that one of the earrings — the whereabouts of the other is still unknown — had later been reset into the brooch coming to Christie’s. The brooch went on to make CHF 250,000 (around $318,000) because, says Fawcett, it was ‘a historic piece with extraordinary royal provenance’.

Lucile Andreani, head of Handbags and Accessories, Paris

Lucile Andreani, head of Christie’s Handbags and Accessories Europe, Middle East and Africa, receives valuation enquiries on a daily basis from clients new to the company. She believes that they choose to sell with Christie’s ‘because we operate with the utmost discretion, provide a high level of service and do not share any background or personal information without their explicit consent. We’re also here to reassure our clients — ensuring each piece benefits from maximum exposure and a carefully tailored strategy to achieve the strongest possible result.’

In April 2022, the department in Europe relocated from London to Paris and staged its first single-owner sale. ‘The sale garnered a lot of traction in the French press,’ recalls Andreani. ‘Articles about it appeared in Le Monde and Le Figaro, among other places.’ Shortly after the sale, Andreani received an enquiry from a new client who had seen the press coverage and wanted to discuss the prospective sale of an Hermès So Black Feather Kelly. ‘It was a very exciting moment, as only five examples are known worldwide,’ she says. Designed by Jean Paul Gaultier and produced in 2010, the So Black is one of the most sought-after handbag collections on the secondary market, and the rarest So Black bags are the feathered versions.

Andreani saw the bag for the first time a few weeks later, when she met the client to discuss the sales terms. ‘To date, this remains one of the most exceptional pieces I have handled,’ she says. ‘Christie’s was the first to bring one of these bags to auction, effectively setting a benchmark for its value on the secondary market.’ The bag sold in November 2022 for €277,200, more than double the high estimate. ‘This encouraged additional examples to come to market subsequently,’ says Andreani.

Mathieu Ruffat, head of sale, Watches and Wristwatches, Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Around four years ago, Geneva-based Mathieu Ruffat received a particularly memorable email via our enquiry form. He didn’t recognise the sender, but realised straight away that they possessed one of the most desirable wristwatches Cartier had ever made: the London ‘Crash’.

This pioneering design was commissioned in the 1960s by Jean-Jacques Cartier, who wanted a timepiece that reflected the capital’s radical spirit. Its fluid, asymmetrical curves stood in stark contrast to the company’s earlier oval ‘Baignoire’ and square ‘Tank’ models.

The initial run of the London ‘Crash’ was released in 1967 and consisted of only about 20 watches, offered exclusively through the city’s Cartier boutique. Each was made in yellow gold and hand-signed ‘Cartier London’ in large, cursive script on the white dial.

Over the following decades, Cartier produced many variants of the ‘Crash’, each with small differences in styling. But as the model achieved almost mythic status among collectors, the most desirable combination remained the one that reflected the watch’s genesis.

When Ruffat saw the photographs, he knew he was dealing with one such example. ‘It was a sublime specimen that could hardly be improved upon,’ he says. ‘It still belonged to the family of the person who bought it from Cartier around 1990, and they had little idea of its value.’ At auction in Geneva in May 2022, it made CHF 819,000 (around $820,000) — a new world record for a 1990s ‘Crash’.

Selling your art or object at Christie’s is a smooth and straightforward experience. We’ll dedicate our global network, unrivalled art-market expertise and carefully honed marketing tactics to achieve the best price for your property — at auction or through private sale. Begin your selling journey by requesting an online estimate and leave the rest to us

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