One of 600 bottles of Romanée-Conti Wine from 1945 that were produced during the end of World War II, set a new world record price for a 750ml bottle of red burgundy at Christie’s auction sale in Geneva on May 17.

The legendary vintage of the bottle was estimated between $56,000 to $78,000, and was sold to a private U.S. collector for a whopping $123,919.

AFP has confirmed rumors that the late actress’s collection of baubles, estimated to be worth $150 million, will hit the auction block later this year.

“Film icon Elizabeth Taylor’s collection of jewelry, artwork, clothing, and memorabilia will be sold at auction, according to Christie’s auction house“.

A series of auctions will officially be announced this spring, with highlights including her famous 69-carat Taylor-Burton diamond.

A colossal self-portrait by “pope of pop” Andy Warhol has sold for $17.4 million at Christie’s in London, doubling pre-auction expectations.

The recently discovered 1967 piece, which measures 1.8 metres square, depicts Warhol with a hand to his mouth in what the auction house called “one of the most representative and iconic images of the artist”.

“It has been an incredibly exciting journey to work with a previously unknown work by Andy Warhol, particularly one with such historic importance,” Francis Outred, head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s Europe said.

A Chinese face or two in the crowd at the world’s auction houses often means one thing: the gavel will fall on a price far beyond the seller’s wildest dreams.

Fierce bidding by Chinese buyers for a vase at a small London auctioneer in November, for example, drove the price up nearly 40 times beyond its estimate, from around $1.9 million to $70 million.

It was the highest price ever paid for a Chinese artwork sold at auction and equivalent to a huge lottery win for the sellers, who found the 18th Century Qianlong Emperor-era piece while clearing out a house after a relative died.

Christie’s notched up the biggest sales figures in the art auction industry’s history last year, the firm announced Thursday, with record global sales of $5 billion.

And Chinese collectors continued to increase their prominence in the auction rooms as the number of buyers from China, Taiwan and HK accounted for a fifth of the total.

Sales in 2010 were up 53 percent with the firm selling more than half the world’s works over $50 million, including the most expensive painting ever to sell at auction: Pablo Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust” for $106.5 million.

A painting of sunflowers and a nude by French artist Paul Gauguin is expected to fetch up to 10 million pounds at auction next month, Christie’s said Friday.

Gauguin’s Nature morte à l’Esperance, a still life painted in 1901 when he was living in Tahiti, will be the star lot of a sale of impressionist and modern art in London.

The painting was presented to the media on Friday, the first time it has been seen in public since 1989.