Would You Buy This $320,000 Brooch Online?

For Peter Carl Fabergé, jeweler to the Russian Czars, diamonds weren't forever. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks ransacked his workshops and seized his iconic imperial Easter eggs, forcing Fabergé to flee to Switzerland where he died three years later. Struggling financially, his family sold the Fabergé trademark to an American perfumer for a meager $25,000 in 1951 — and the name began to crop up on low-end cosmetics and toiletries. By the time Unilever purchased the brand for $1.6 billion in 1989, consumers associated Fabergé — once the hallmark of imperial grandeur — with cheap fragrances like...