Fabulously expensive rare dishes, which went to their owners quite by accident

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

If you are the happy owner of an old grandmother's chest or attic, where a heap of incomprehensible rubbish is gathering dust, do not rush to get rid of such an "inheritance". History knows many cases when in the family "bins" were truly amazing things that brought their owners a fortune.

Chinese style english tea

Most of the recent finds have been from Britain, and the case concerned ancient pottery. For example, a resident of Dorset County accidentally found out that an old teapot, which had been kept in the family for many decades and was not considered a rarity, has at the bottom the blue seal of Emperor Qianlong, who ruled in China in 1735-1796. An expert who recognized a unique thing in a plain old dish thought it could be sold for several thousand dollars, but he was greatly mistaken. At the auction, they paid a million for the imperial rarity.

A Chinese vase from about the same period was acquired by a lucky customer at a gift shop in Hertfordshire. The man paid only $ 1.5 for it and decided to put it up for sale via the Internet. Within a few days, hundreds of people responded to his ad, offering a lot of money for a small product. Only then did the lucky man suspect something was wrong and took his purchase for a professional examination. It turned out that he was holding a real ancient treasure. Its cost at the auction exceeded 500 thousand dollars.

Another Chinese thing, bought in an antique shop, was also not immediately appreciated. Moreover, when the family who bought the bronze bowl took it to the specialists, they said that they got an inexpensive fake. As a result, antiques began to be used as containers for tennis balls. Only a specialist in oriental art, who was invited to the house to evaluate other things, helped to determine its true value. The expert, seeing in the corridor a "fake" filled with tennis balls, suggested that this specimen is rather rare, such ones have never been sold at Western auctions, therefore, they probably could not appreciate it. Research has confirmed him right. The bowl turned out to be very old, made to order for the Chinese emperor about 300 years ago. Its cost was about $ 5 million.

General cleaning sometimes turns out to be a very useful activity. Recently, with a difference of a year, Chinese vases were found during such revisions in France and England during such revisions. A British pensioner discovered a rarity, preparing to move to a nursing home and selling excess trash from an apartment, the vase was once brought by his aunt from China. And the lucky Frenchman found a similar value, sorting through the things left in the attic in the house of deceased relatives. Both finds turned out to be very valuable - they were sold as a result for 280 and 670 thousand dollars.

Faberge egg for smelting

A jeweler from the United States almost made a tragic mistake when he bought an item for melting down for scrap gold at an antique fair for 14 thousand dollars. However, having found a watch from Vacheron Constantin inside, the merchant decided to resell the old toy, but there were no buyers. Getting ready for the melting, the man, just in case, entered into the search query "egg", "Vacheron Constantin". The found article of the British edition of The Telegraph shocked him, because it was about one of the lost Imperial Easter eggs, designed by Carl Faberge.

Alexander III presented this masterpiece of jewelry art to his wife Maria Feodorovna for Easter in 1887. During the revolution, the trail of the precious toy was lost. Fortunately, the article also included an old photograph of an egg, which looked like two peas in a pod. The astonished jeweler immediately took the find to London, where the experts of the art gallery confirmed his guess. Sold the egg for $ 33 million to a private collector. Unfortunately, there was no question of returning the rarity to Russia.

American history for pennies

In general, Americans are the undoubted leaders in selling unique works of art for a pittance. Most of these cases occur overseas. Moreover, they show inattention (or not very high literacy) not only to Western creativity, but also to their own history. So, in Pennsylvania, at a garage sale for only $ 4, a painting was bought that had an unusual "attachment". An old document was attached to the reverse side, in which experts recognized the original of the US Declaration of Independence, made in 1776. A total of 200 copies of this document were published, of which it was believed that 25 have survived to this day. The rarity was estimated at two million dollars.

It's amazing that such a happy mistake happened twice in America. In 2006, a certain Michael Sparks from Nashville bought a copy of the Declaration from a small thrift store for $ 2.50. However, when checked, it also turned out to be an old specimen.