Worth 600,000 euros
Man makes an absolute lucky buy at flea market
© Arturo Holmes / Getty Images
The man bought a bowl for $ 35 at the flea market – now it's sold for $ 721,800 at Sotheby's. Because the inconspicuous piece comes from the Ming Dynasty.
Last year a Connecticut man was shopping at a flea market. He has a weakness for beautiful, old ceramics and discovered a small bowl at one of the stands that he liked. The piece was decorated with blue patterns and was apparently hand-painted. The man also suspected that it was actually a bit older – he reached an agreement with the seller and paid the equivalent of 35 euros for the small bowl. How old it really is, however, later not only surprised the buyer, who had made a real stroke of luck here.
Following a hunch, he later brought the small bowl to the experts at the famous auction house Sotheby's in New York. They trusted their eyes, as the company's China expert, Angela McAteer, reported later. It was "immediately clear to her that we were looking at something really, very special," she says later. Because the actually quite inconspicuous, small bowl was not a hundred or two hundred years old – it was made in China between 1400 and 1500. There are only six known bowls of this type from the Ming Dynasty in the world.
Such finds are extremely rare
The man decided to sell his treasure. The auction house Sotheby's has now auctioned the valuable bowl – and the originally estimated price of $ 500,000 has been exceeded. On Wednesday, the piece brought in a total of 721,800 dollars (around 600,000 euros) for the more than happy flea market buyer. Slightly more than he paid for it himself …
The experts at Sotheby's, however, have warned everyone who is enthusiastic about buying empty the tableware stalls at the next flea market: Such a find is very, very rare. And even for experts, the age and authenticity of such a bowl can hardly be recognized with certainty at first glance.
Swell: CNN, "Spiegel Online"
This article originally appeared on stern.de.