SINGAPORE: Last week, a seemingly ordinary Chinese vase sold for an astronomical sum of money at an auction in Paris.
Valued at a respectable €2,000 (US$1,966), it sparked a bidding war among about 30 people at the auction in Fontainebleau on Oct 1, and eventually sold for €7.7 million – or €9.12 million including fees.
The hammer price shocked the auction house as they believed it was an ordinary porcelain-and-enamel piece dating to the 20th century.
The vase’s seller had never even seen it, according to reports, and had simply arranged for the vase to be sold from her late mother’s estate.
Bidders, however, were convinced that it was a rare 18th-century artefact.
The sale got people talking about the unknown treasures that might be waiting to be discovered in their own storerooms.
But their wishful thinking is not entirely unfounded – old trinkets and unappreciated antiques regularly turn into life-changing windfalls.
Here are five other times people have struck gold.
US$3 garage sale bowl sold for more than US$2 million
In 2007, someone got the bargain of a lifetime at a yard sale in upstate New York.
Imagine picking up an elegant but otherwise apparently unremarkable white ceramic bowl for the princely sum of US$3.
A fair price for an object with a diameter of just 12.7cm, don’t you think?
It was later revealed to be a Northern Song dynasty Ding ware bowl, as Forbes and other media outlets reported in 2013.
The piece was, in fact, about 1,000 years old, and one of only two such bowls known to exist.
Auction house Sotheby’s estimated that it would sell for up to US$300,000, but it was eventually purchased by a London dealer for US$2.23 million after a four-cornered bidding war.
Time to relook at your dinner bowls?
US$33 million Faberge egg that belonged to a Russian Tsar
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