Ordinary vase mistaken for a 'rare artefact', sold at 4000 times its value

Competition is good, it pushes you to do better, and aim higher. When it comes to an auction competition or rather a competitive bidding can be the one thing that makes it a success. That's what happened in France, a bidding war over a vase worth a little less than $2,000 led to it being sold for a whopping $7.59 million. The total came to $8.99 million after factoring in the seller's fee.

The vase in question is an "ordinary" Chinese vase, but it was mistakenly presumed by bidders to be a rare 18th-century artefact, which resulted in the object being sold at around 4,000 times its estimated value.

As per Guardian, the vase which is a tianqiuping style porcelain was put up for auction by a French woman living in the nation's overseas territory. It was left to her by her late mother. She had not even seen the 54-centimetre tall vase and had arranged for it to be directly picked from her mother's estate in Brittany.

The auction house was informed that it belonged to the seller's grandmother who was a Parisian collector "in the last century."

One of the Osenat Auction House, auctioneers Jean-Pierre called the incident "a crazy story". The auction house described the vase as "quite ordinary" and said that it dated from the 20th century. An expert at the auction house said that it would have been extremely rare if it had been 200 years older.

(With inputs from agencies)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE