The unbelievable R Lalique Butterfly Necklace that came up for sale yesterday at Pierre Berge & Associes in Brussels, and which is pictured here, made a high bid of 200,000 Euros against an estimate of 60,000 to 80,000. With the 24% added charges for premium and tax, the total price is 248,000 Euros, or about $360,000 US at today’s exchange rates! A very strong price. The necklace has been listed in our RLalique at Auction Section for several weeks, and is also pictured in a post on this Blog from late November. This wonderful necklace, featured blue butterflies, amethysts, enamel work and colored gold. It came with the original R Lalique presentation box. An amazing example of the work of the great Rene Lalique and another good auction result for R Lalique as we head into the new year. Our French can use some help, but hopefully the buyer of this R Lalique treasure told the auction house something close to this: Je l’ai vu chez RLalique.com!
The Mastro Auction held in Chicago (and via their website and Ebay live) on Saturday the 13th, reports good overall results. We don’t have all the final lot by lot details, but they are reporting over 75% of the lots sold, with several strong highlight sales prices. One great result was the rare Cased Yellow Butterscotch Chardons Vase selling as Lot 483 and pictured here, which was hammered down at $14,000 bid price, plus a 22.5% Ebay Live premium for a total price of $17,150. Top seller was Lot 355, the beautiful Opalescent Thais Statue which made $27,500 and a premium of 20% ($5,500) for total price of $33,000. The three R Lalique flower sets of architectural panels which were the last three lots of the auction sold for $7500, $7000, and $7000 respectively, for a premium inclusive total for the three lots of $25,800. Also selling well was Lot 456, the striking R Lalique Tourterelles Opalescent Covered Vase which made a premium inclusive $12,000. Update Dec 26th – Final totals for the Mastro Sale were 164 of 225 lots sold, for a premium inclusive total of $324,810.
We scour the world to bring you information on great R Lalique items coming up for auction, and there can be no better example of the info flowing in here at World Headquarters than our listing of an R Lalique Senart Vase coming up for auction in Istanbul Turkey on December 20th at the Alif Art Auction House! Yes, Istanbul, you read it right! Figuring that many of our readers may not have done business in Turkey before, we’ve contacted the auction house directly to obtain information for you on how to make arrangements to investigate and bid on the vase. Here is the edited combined contents of two email replies we received from the auction house:
The Grande Ovale Tete Penchee Opalescent R Lalique Statue that appeared at Forsythes’ Auctions in Russellville, Ohio sold to an Ebay bidder for a strong $24,500 plus 18% buyer’s premium on December 6th, bringing the total sales price to $28,910. A great looking and rare statue nearly 15 inches high, the final result well exceeded the wide $8000 to $15,000 estimate. As we see from time to time on R Lalique glass items, the statue was signed with the wrong model number, having been signed 828 instead of 827 after the R. Lalique signature on the underside. Of course, as we may have mentioned previously, a correct R Lalique item authenticates the signature, not the other way around. In this case, it would not have mattered a whit if the statue was unsigned! You have to love it when great R Lalique pieces like this appear in the heartland of the United States in places like Russellville. We looked it up, and according to the last Census, in the year 2000 Russellville had a population of 453 people in 190 households. The entire village comprises .8 square miles. A great place for a great R Lalique result. We hope the buyer remembered to tell Forsythes what is becoming an increasingly familiar phrase at auction houses around the world: I saw it at RLalique.com!
Who would have thought that several different bidders, including one rumored to be a regular buyer and seller of R Lalique items, would compete to run Ebay Item 110319076762 up to $713.47, PLUS the cost to ship from Paraguay? Talk about being “thrown for a loupe”! Seriously, we apparently have to do a better job of getting out the word that there is a place to go for information that may be helpful to purchasers of RLalique! This item was the subject of some comment in the 
Our newest R Lalique listing has appeared on Ebay. It’s a good R Lalique Deux Figurines Menu Holder, circa 1924. The menu holder has a starting price of only $250, well below recent sales prices, and no reserve. Our Ebay User I.D, is RLaliqueSales. We’ve posted the listing in the 
Our R Lalique Worldwide Auction listings have set a new record this morning, with 64 different upcoming auctions currently listed containing hundreds and hundreds of great R Lalique items coming up for sale all over the globe. The 64 listings span the entire range of the works of the great Rene Lalique, from the opalescent Poissons Bowl coming up on December 4th (along with several items) in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France, to the incredible ‘Bouquet de Fleurs’ R Lalique Wood and Glass (and other elements too) Panel for the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits coming up for sale at Christies in New York City on December 16th. These auctions are taking place in Canada, Germany, Belgium, the US, France, Italy, the UK; too many places to list, all over the world. And we’ve just put up our first R Lalique Worldwide Auction Listing for 2009, a pair of R Lalique Faucon Car Mascots that have appeared in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin in the US (go find that one on a map :)! 
We hope the day will come when we’re able to report 100 R Lalique Worldwide Auction listings to you. But passing the 60 mark for the first time is a great milestone, and it reflects the huge amount of information that we have available flowing in here at World Headquarters which we can report to you. Please don’t forget when you contact the auction houses that are offering this wonderful R Lalique material, to let them know that you saw the R Lalique item here, at RLalique.com. It makes our job of getting information on upcoming items a whole lot easier when the auction houses know that their listings here are creating interest among potential bidders. Happy hunting!
Here is a link to a video where 
Our 3rd R Lalique listing has appeared on Ebay. It’s a good R Lalique Chien Dog Seal/Cachet, circa 1926. The seal has a starting price well below half of recent sales prices, and no reserve. Our Ebay User I.D, is RLaliqueSales. We’ve posted the listing in the 
A great looking Rene Lalique Vase Hirondelles appeared on Ebay today. This elegant early vase has sold well in the past, making $24,000 including the premium at Christies New York in February of 2006, and 9 months later at Rago Arts and Auction Center in NJ making $13,200, again with the premium included. Of course, in red glass it has gone for a bit more :). Nice to see these kinds of great old Rene Lalique vases pop up from time to time. Lalique Hirondelles Vase – Ebay Item Number 220314781690.
BUT, closer to the ancestral home of RLalique.com, consider the story of a Tucson Arizona man named Carl Rice. Carl frequented weekend garage and estate sales in the Tucson area. His biggest profit ever on the re-sale of one of his weekend finds, was the $55 he had made selling a $25 purchase for $80! On June 16th 1996, as was his habit, Carl perused the estate sales listings in his local paper, and then he headed off to an estate sale at the home of the recently deceased 94 year old Martha Nelson, where the representatives of her estate were clearing out her possessions. There in the Nelson home, Carl bought a pair of paintings off the wall for the asking price of $88. He then re-sold the pair at Christies New York in December of 1996 for over One Million Dollars! That’s right, over $1,000,000! 
A local Tucson gallery owner saw the Christies catalog noting the Nelson estate provenance, and mentioned it to the representatives for the dead lady’s estate. They of course mentioned the good fortune of Lucky Carl to their lawyers, and Lucky Carl quickly found out that just as night follows day, lawsuits follow lawyers. They sued Lucky Carl in January 1998, claiming that it was somehow his responsibility to let them know they had underpriced the paintings by $1,071,912! This ridiculous lawsuit dragged on for nearly three years until December 2000 before being tossed out by the Arizona Court of Appeals. Somehow we have the feeling that Lucky Carl, while a little less lucky, is a whole lot smarter for the experience.
One final note about the case of Lucky Carl. The gallery owner that saw the provenance in the Christies catalogue and ratted out Lucky Carl, was quoted in the Tucson Daily Star newspaper as follows: “If you are going through an estate sale, YOU have a responsibility to say you are aware this is such a valuable painting.” Sure, that’s why people go to boot sales, garage sales, estate sales and the like. So that they can appraise and authenticate items for the sellers, and help the sellers identify hidden treasures. And here we thought all the people in Tucson lived on the same planet as the rest of us. We stand corrected.
For those Marlon Brando fans out there, the appearance of the seldom seen R. Lalique Du Barry box coming up at auction on November 19th, and which is referred to in certain esoteric circles as “The Godfather Box”, brings back fond memories of what was perhaps Brando’s greatest modern movie role. The box appeared in the original Godfather Movie released in 1972 (was it that long ago – 48 years as of 2020?) in a bit of a cameo appearance. A Du Barry is coming up for sale at Kodner Galleries in Florida. Most times you see this box with the cover missing (go figure!), but this one is apparently complete. Next time you see the original movie, watch for it! And when you contact Kodner Galleries, don’t forget to tell them you saw this great R Lalique box here, at RLalique.com. And for all the information we have about the Du Barry Box including many sale examples plus a link to the movie clip showing the box with Brando, see the 
Significant restoration and a 1 feedback seller, but rare has hen’s teeth, and hard to find in any condition. The R Lalique Perfume People (sorry about the alliteration, couldn’t resist, but at least we didn’t single out the Particularly Passionate ones) and R Lalique collectors of all stripes might find it worth checking into. Something tells us that this may not be the first ride at the rodeo for this bottle, but no way to know without some investigation. And either way, a cool and hard to get, early R Lalique design. The Ebay Item Number is 120333834682.
Christies South Kensington’s Semi-Annual Sale of the works of the great Rene Lalique, posted a very respectable sale total of £318,450 including buyer’s premium. The sale had a catalogued 126 lots, but a couple were withdrawn and not offered. A total of 90 lots sold, for a respectable take up rate of 71%, which would be bit higher if the withdrawals were removed from consideration. High seller was of course the fresh to market R Lalique 1929 Cire Perdue Vase Feuilles Fougeres, CP551, which appears in the R Lalique Catalogue Raisonne only with information that it exists, and without even a drawing, let alone a picture. A photo of this vase has graced our home page for the better part of the past month. Measuring around 4.75 inches high (slightly smaller than a Rampillon Vase), this unique vase had a high relief design, and was in nearly original condition. The buyer was a London dealer in the room, thought by some observers to be acting on behalf of another dealer that wished to remain anonymous (intrigue). Big question – Who will step up to tell Christie’s “I saw it at RLalique.com”? These concerns aside, it sold for £32,450 including the buyer’s premium, against an estimate of £20,000 to £30,000.