A bracelet centred on a 197.80-carat sapphire from the collection of Russia's Romanov family sold at Sotheby's in Geneva on 11 November for CHF 4.1 million, about $4.9 million. The result was more than double the top of its pre-sale estimate of CHF 850,000 to CHF 1.7 million, or roughly $1.02 million to $2.04 million.

The cushion-shaped stone sits in a geometric diamond bracelet made by Cartier, which mounted the sapphire in its present setting in 2015. The bracelet has an interchangeable rock crystal centre, a detail Sotheby's linked to Cartier's Art Deco heritage. The house described the stone as coming from the collection of the Romanov family, calling the imperial holdings arguably the most opulent royal collection ever assembled.

The sapphire's recorded history reaches back to the Russian court of the nineteenth century. It can be seen beside its pair on the front of a skirt worn by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Nicholas II, at a ball in 1883. The exact date the Romanovs acquired the stone is not known. After the revolution, the Soviet authorities sold off the imperial jewels during the 1920s, and the sapphire was acquired in 1927 by the socialite Ganna Walska.

Walska first had the stone set in a necklace, and by the time it was sold as part of her estate in 1971 it had been moved onto a shorter necklace. Cartier's 2015 remounting turned it into the bracelet sold this week. Romanov jewels have repeatedly outperformed expectations at auction: in 2021 a sapphire and diamond brooch with matching earrings sold at Sotheby's for CHF 806,500, nearly twice its high estimate.