Do you want to buy something once owned by Nicholas and Alexandra? Then you can fork over 229,000-343,000 dollars (120,000-180,000 pounds) for Nicholas and Alexandra's orange enamel, silver-gilt-encrusted Fabergé thermometer. It's featured in Sotheby's "Russian Sale," scheduled for November 28, 2006. (I have the two catalogs for the auction sitting in front of me. The offerings are incredible. A lot of Fabergé items. A lot of beautiful paintings, sculpture, and jewelry. All lavishly illustrated in color photographs.)
You don't believe this thermometer was really owned by Nicholas and Alexandra? Sotheby's has the documentation to prove it - two bills of sale, presented by Fabergé on December 9, 1898, to the imperial households of the tsar and tsarina, each for half of the total owed amount (only 105 rubles!) - so it truly was a jointly owned thermometer.
Oh, and BTW, this thermometer is also unusual for a Russian-manufactured thermometer in so far as it is in Fahrenheit and not in Celsius. Perhaps, as the catalog suggests, the English-raised Alexandra was more comfortable using a thermometer that gauged the temperature in Fahrenheit.
I just thought that fans of Nicholas and Alexandra, as well as Fabergé aficionados, would want to be apprised of these recent developments.