The Soviet state sold the Romanov jewels by the kilogram in 1926, while a British antiquarian helped a grand duchess get her jewels out and her daughter sold the tiara to Queen Mary

In 1874 Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, brother of the future Alexander III, gave his bride a tiara made by the court jeweller Carl Edvard Bolin. It became known as the Vladimir Tiara. In August 1915 the crown jewels, objets d'art and imperial plate were sent from Petrograd to the Kremlin in Moscow. After the Revolution the widowed grand duchess, Maria Pavlovna, hid in Kislovodsk while her jewels stayed hidden in Petrograd. The English antiquarian Albert Stopford wrote in his diary on 2 August 1917 that he had brought her money from Petrograd in his boots. He helped her retrieve her jewels from their hiding place. He left Petrograd on 26 September 1917 and landed at Aberdeen on 6 October. She left Russia in 1920. After her death her daughter sold her jewels to Queen Mary. Elizabeth II inherited the tiara from her grandmother. The state jewels in Moscow were opened, catalogued and photographed. In 1925 and 1926 the Soviet government published an illustrated catalogue in the main European languages and sent it to possible buyers. In October 1926 Norman Weis, for an Anglo-American syndicate, bought almost 10 kilograms of imperial jewels for £50,000. The main pieces were auctioned in London in March 1927 in 124 lots, including an imperial wedding crown. One account puts the pieces sold at close to 70 percent of the collection. Many of those pieces are now untraced. The rest, including the coronation regalia, went on display in the Kremlin in 1967.