Failing to recognise a valuable antique can be very costly, as a family from the South-West London has just found out. A rare vase, worth £50,000 in pristine condition, has been put up for auction with an estimate of £3 - 6,000. The reason for the dramatic difference is that an aunt of the family who own it had a hole drilled in the base to turn the 18th century Chinese porcelain vase into a lamp. It was brought from China in the early 20th century by the current owner’s great-grandfather. The 15-inch vase dates to the reign of Emperor Qianlong and despite the ‘damage’ the auctioneers, Dukes of Dorchester, are still saying it might reach £20,000 when it comes up for auction on 24 July.
A note in which the Queen Mother asked her aide to pack gin and Dubonnet sold for £16,000 – five times more than had been expected. The hand-written note, the subject of a fierce telephone bidding exchange, asked for an outdoor lunch, with an additional comment at the end. "I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed." A letter to Mr Tallon from Princess Diana, after the birth of Prince William, sold for £5,000, while another seven letters from the Princess sold for £15,000 in total.
Initial indications are that 700 lots have sold for close to £500,000; bidders had arrived from overseas and North America in particular which helped the auction reach such a large figure
Recently forty-one Celtic gold coins that were found by a metal detectorist sold for £35,500. The coins, were found over a three-year period scattered across a ploughed field near Westerham in Kent. Celtic coinage, staters, are the most frequently found items from the years before the Roman invasion.
There were three staters and thirty-eight quarter staters, mostly depicting a horse surrounded by various motifs; the design was copied from Greek coins. One of the coins was incredibly rare and was attributed to a ruler named Diras. It is thought he came from north of the Thames and while it was expected that the coin might fetch £4,000 it went for £10,500 to a dealer in New York.
It’s far from the biggest hoard of staters that have ever been discovered. In1995, 206 staters, along with a Roman ring and bracelet, were found by two metal detectorists on farmland near Alton in Hampshire. They were one foot below the surface; shortly afterwards they found a second hoard a few feet away containing fifty gold staters. Both hoards were declared treasure trove and valued at £102,074
