A bronze statue valued on went on to make millions more than predicted.
Bought for $100 – around £80 – in a Missouri garage sale 20 years ago, a Buddhist ornament of a deity sold for more than $2million at auction in 2019.
The object in question was a statuette of Avalokiteshvara, also known as Guanyin. The statue is sitting in the royal rajalilasana pose and sports six hands – three on each side. Perched atop a wooden box, the statue featured lotus stems and a dharma wheel.
But when the seller took it to be appraised on Antiques Roadshow US when the PBS programme visited St Louis in 2017, she was told it was worth around $100,000-$125,000. The gilt-bronze figure was estimated to have been of imperial provenance, dating to the 15th century Ming Dynasty.
Later research put it even further back to around the late Tang Dynasty – 618-907 AD.
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An £80 garage sale find sold for more than £1.6million (Image: PBS)
Sadly most of the gilt had faded from the statue and it was missing an arm. Still, when the owner went on to auction off the item, she was left gobsmacked when it blew those conservative estimates out of the water.
The hammer at Sotheby’s fell at $2,060,000 – around £1,686,347.
The owner explained of her almost accidental purchase: “I almost didn’t have a chance to acquire it, because I was having 15 people for lunch. There was a local person who was a colourful character in Kirkwood [Missouri] so I really wanted to get to his garage sale [so] I rushed out.
Expert Robert Waterhouse provided a conservative estimate (Image: PBS)
“I paid probably between $75 and $100, which was a lot for me. The [antiques] dealers had been there for two days before, so I thought everything good would be gone.
“I thought it was so beautiful, I just grabbed it. I didn’t mind the damage.”