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Japan Firm Pays Record 1.5 B. Yen for Original Birkin Bag

Japan Firm Pays Record 1.5 B. Yen for Original Birkin Bag

The original Hermes Birkin bag sold to Japanese company at auction (Courtesy of Sotheby's)
The original Hermes Birkin bag sold to Japanese company at auction (Courtesy of Sotheby's)

   Tokyo, July 11 (Jiji Press)--The prototype Hermes Birkin bag was sold for about 1.47 billion yen to a Japanese company at a recent auction.
   At Sotheby's in Paris on Thursday, Tokyo-based Valuence Japan Inc. beat eight rivals in some 10 minutes.
   The auction firm said the bag, actually used by the late actor Jane Birkin, became the highest-priced handbag ever put up for auction.
   According to French news agency AFP, the previous record was approximately 75 million yen, also for a Birkin bag.
   It has been known that a complaint by Birkin, a popular British actor and singer in France who died in 2023 at age 76, to then Hermes chief Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight that there was no handbag of suitable size gave birth to the first of bags later named after her.

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AFP-JIJI PRESS NEWS JOURNAL


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