story's we like so much,
a man, aged in his 80s, had inherited the 11in moonflask from a relative many years ago and thought it was of little value because of the damage it had suffered, experts suspected the piece dated back to Imperial China and put a £2,000 pre-sale estimate on it, much to the delight of the owner,
but the owners delight went to joy as the vase went under the hammer for £119,500 the owner was said to have been 'over the moon' with the price realised, especially as he had only been expecting to receive one 60th of the sale price,
but it could have been so much better, the piece had a crack in it which had been repaired in the 1960s, if it was not cracked it could have gone for as much as £1million!
a Duke's spokesman said: ‘the owner carried the vase in to us in this rather tatty old cardboard box, when we looked more closely we spotted the six-character reign mark of Emperor Xuande from the Ming dynasty on the neck of the vase and got very excited, the seller would have been happy if it had met the reserve price, He is a man of modest means so he was over the moon with the final price,’ lucky or what? but just think, if only it had not been cracked.
No comments:
Post a Comment