This Hermès Birkin Bag Just Broke a Record at Auction
An Hermès Birkin bag just sold for $380,000 in Hong Kong, thus becoming the world’s most expensive bag ever to sell at auction.
The bag is a specialty, dyed white “Himalaya” crocodile style encrusted with hundreds of diamonds, reported the AP. The exclusive style has 18-karat gold buckles and 205 diamonds decorating the strap.
The jaw-dropping Hermès Birkin bag was auctioned off by Christie’s. Initially, it was predicted to sell for between $193,000 and $258,000, but it soared well past that estimate, nearly doubling the low end of the range and skyrocketing past the high end. According to the AP, the final price was reached after 10 to 15 minutes of “intense bidding in the auction room and from phone calls and online buyers.”
Birkin now holds the record for priciest arm candy, breaking its own record with the sale. Until now, the honor was held by a sale also made by Christie’s for a nearly identical Hermès Himalaya Birkin bag. That bag was sold in 2016 for $300,168 at Christie’s 30th Anniversary Hong Kong auction.
Christie’s calls the Hermès Himalaya the “Rarest Handbag in the World,” so it’s easy to see why this style has held the record not once, but twice. On its website, Christie’s gives an extensive description of both the bag’s history and origin, though it does not provide the photograph of the record-holding bag. The auction house says that the bag is made of Nilo crocodile hide and given the Himalaya name because of the “delicate gradation of the colour. The smokey grey fades into pearly white, resembling the majestic, snow-capped Himalayas,” the AP reports, and that the bag is so rare that only one or two are believed to be created each year.
The lucky buyer’s identity has not been made public, but whoever the buyer is, the buyer has gone down in handbag history. Only time will tell what bag will topple this epic sale, but our money is on yet another diamond Himalaya Birkin.
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