Albert Einsteins love letters sold at fire sale price of $432K, billionaire banker claims in lawsuit against Christies Auction House

Albert Einstein’s love letters and a slew of other pricey artwork are at the center of a nasty legal battle between Christie’s Auction House and a banking billionaire who owns Encyclopedia Britannica.Jacqui Safra, 78, claims Christie’s sold off much of his cherished art collection at “fire sale” prices — to the tune of $37.5 million — in a dispute over a $63 million advance the auction house alleges he defaulted on, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit from last week.That included 55 letters that Einstein wrote to his eventual first wife, Mileva Marić, dated from 1989 and 1903 and which make up almost half of all of the renowned physicist’s correspondence up until 1903, the filing claims.The letters were expected to sell for between $1.3 million and $2 million but instead fetched a measly $432,000 — or 35% of Christie’s lowest estimate of what they would go for.The sale price was also less than $442,500 that Safra originally bought them for from Christie’s in 1996, the court papers claim.Safra — who has also financed eight Woody Allen films — claims his relationship soured with Christie’s after the auction house gave him the huge advance in 2022, backed by a slew of his personal art collection he claims is worth “well over $100 million,” the suit says.He claims his agreement with Christie’s included the option for him to choose the order that his pieces sold in the hopes that the earlier works would repay the advance in full and he wouldn’t be forced to part with pieces that held more sentimental value for him.By 2023, Christie’s notified Safra that he was in default of his advance — a fact which has been under dispute — and so it began selling off his pieces that the art house knew “carried particular personal value to Mr.

Safra,” the filing claims.Safra claims that to date, he’s repaid $45 million of the advance, with $37 million coming from the sales of his collection pieces and another $8 million paymen...