Attention all Cash in the Attic fans: sifting through junk shops is now officially the only sure-fire way of beating the credit crunch. A Claret jug valued at just £100 in a local auction house in Somerset has just fetched over £3m at auction.
The jug was initially believed to be a cheapo French affair and had a £100 estimate tagged on it. Eyebrows soon began to rise, however, when bidding ran up into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
It subsequently transpired that this was no Ratners decanter, but instead was made over a thousand years ago for the Fatimad rulers of Cairo in Egypt. Carved out of a single piece of crystal, there are only seven such 'ewers' known in the world – one of which is on display in the V&A.
So get back down to your local charity shop and start sifting through that bric-a-brac. That chipped Beatrix Potter teapot at the back could have been lovingly crafted in the Ming Dynasty...
Photo courtesy of DG Jones's Photostream under the Creative Commons license.
