The Romanov diamonds that vanished in 1918

There is a single line in a 1925 Bolshevik inventory ledger that explains almost everything about what happened to the Romanov jewelry collection between July 1918 and the present day. Eighty-six pieces — between thirty and forty percent of the original imperial collection — were unaccounted for in the records of the Imperial Cabinet. Some have surfaced since. Most have not. In this video I trace the paper trail of the missing Romanov pieces — through the Ekaterinburg execution-night recoveries, the early Soviet sales of 1921 and 1922, the 1927 Christie's auction in London, the Tobolsk and Petrograd cache discoveries, and what the British royal collection quietly acquired and continues to hold.

I'm Geoffrey Whitcombe, retired royal jewelry curator. On this channel I take you inside the records, the workshops, and the vaults of the British and European royal collections — for viewers who want the curatorial reading, not the press summary.