A 22k Gold Egg Garrard Made for Cadbury’s Just Set an Auction Record

By Annie Davidson Watson | August 10, 2026

Garrard & Co., the London luxury jewelry house that served as Crown Jeweller to the British royal family for over 160 years, made a lot of extraordinary things. A 22k gold egg for a chocolate company’s treasure hunt campaign is perhaps not the most obvious item on that list, but it did just set a world auction record.

The “Cuckoo Cuckoo” egg, one of 12 individually designed 22k gold eggs Cadbury’s commissioned from Garrard in 1983, sold for £123,500 (approximately $166,100) at Batemans Auctioneers on August 1—six times its pre-sale estimate and a new record for any Cadbury’s Conundrum egg at auction. The previous owner had bought it in 2018 for a hammer price of £6,500.

In the early 1980s, Cadbury’s buried 12 Perspex caskets at secret locations around the UK as part of a promotional campaign for Creme Eggs. The only way to find them was by solving riddles in a purpose-published book called Conundrum: The Cadbury’s Creme Egg Mystery, written by Don Shaw and illustrated by Nick Price. Successful hunters called Cadbury’s with a passphrase and were later presented with one of the gold Garrard eggs at a ceremony. In 1983, a man named Clive Pinder from Dorset solved the clues pointing to Cricket St Thomas in Somerset and retrieved the Cuckoo Cuckoo casket.

The egg itself is beautifully made: translucent green and blue enamel over 22k gold, depicting a cuckoo nesting in a tree with seven figures below, seven wheatsheaves engraved on the reverse, and the Garrard & Co., London, 1983 hallmark. It sold with its original green leather presentation box, the Perspex casket, the wooden Conundrum box, a handwritten parchment letter, and a copy of the book.

“This egg represents so much more than a beautifully crafted piece by the esteemed jewelers Garrard & Co.,” said Greg Bateman, managing director of Batemans Auctioneers, in a statement. “It is a tangible link to a moment in time when an advertising campaign became part of everyday life.”

(Photo courtesy of Batemans Auctioneers)

Follow me on Instagram: @anniedavidsonwatson