A box of tableware stored in an attic for decades with the label “broken porcelain” sold at auction for more than $200,000 last week.
The owner, Gill Stewart, had been looking for Christmas decorations during the holiday season last year when she stumbled across the box, which she had inherited from her grandfather, according to the BBC.
She said she almost threw it away.
“Every time I went up to get the Christmas decorations, I thought ‘I must do something with that box,'” she told the outlet.
However, she eventually took it to an auctioneer in Louth, a town in England.
The auctioneer, James Laverack of John Taylors Auctioneers, told the BBC the items looked “quite unassuming” — the sort of thing people might find in yard sales and thrift stores.
John Taylors Auctioneers
He initially divided the collection into lots, giving an initial total valuation of a couple of thousand dollars.
‘We expected the Chinese ceramics to sell well — however, they achieved prices way beyond our dreams,” Laverack told Business Insider.
Interest picked up quickly after the items were listed, and at the sale last week, the lots sold for a total of $204,000, including fees.
According to the BBC, when Laverack called Stewart to tell her, he first asked her: “Are you sitting down?”
John Taylors Auctioneers
One lot — a set of five Chinese saucers that had been valued at under $100 — ended up going for nearly $45,000.
Another set of 16 teacups, valued at no more than $100, sold for $75,000.
Even a broken bowl went for $6,300.
Stewart was “flabbergasted” by the news, Laverack told BI.
Stewart told the BBC that her grandfather had picked up the items in China, where he had been stationed before World War I.
Many of them date back hundreds of years, and her grandfather had kept detailed notes on their provenance, she said. He also kept a note of who was responsible for breaking some of the pieces — which was often her grandmother, she said.
“She had broken the most valuable ones!” Stewart told the BBC.
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