Chess piece bought for $6, expected to sell for $1.2 million.

[Tanuki]

https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/news/one-million-chess-piece-2853090/

?w=660

..."A Scottish family may has just won the ultimate game—of luck. A beloved antique chess piece, in the family for more than five decades, has turned out to be a medieval treasure worth more than anyone could’ve imagined.

The Edinburgh family’s grandfather, an antique dealer, originally purchased the 3.5-inch chess piece from another dealer in 1964 for £5 (a little over $6 at current exchange). The antique aficionado dubbed the piece a “walrus tusk warrior chessman” and stored it away for safe keeping. Little did he know that scholars and curators had long sought the walrus ivory chessman as one of only five missing from the circa 1200 Lewis Chessmen hoard.


The Lewis Chessmen set features seated kings, queens, bishops, knights, pawns and standing warders—just like the family’s piece. Eighty-two pieces of the set are now in the British Museum, and another 11 pieces are in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland. Crafted in medieval Norway, the set was lost for 500 years shortly after its manufacture. The exact lore is unclear—some believe it was sealed away by a merchant, while others claim its discovery in 1831 was courtesy of a particularly hungry stray cow. What is certain is that five pieces of the set were missing—until now.
.......

Turns out she wasn’t too far off: Curious about the piece’s provenance, the family brought the statuette to Sotheby’s of London for assessment, only to discover that it was a long-lost Lewis Chessmen. Sotheby’s expert Alexander Kader told the BBC that his “jaw dropped” when he realized what they had in their possession: “We get called down to the counter and have no idea what we are going to see…. I said, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s one of the Lewis Chessmen.'”...(more)

[LakeArenal]

1. Just love stories like this.

My mom probably would have said “That old thing” and thrown it out.

[hibbing]

2. This guy is cool looking n/t

[certainot]

12. one of the kings pawns, capable of slaughtering entire villages for

being late for toil. okay maybe a rook...

[Reader Rabbit]

3. As soon as I saw the headline, I wondered if it was one of the Lewis Chessmen!

They are incredible!



I like the Berserker pieces the best. I think they're the rooks.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Very, very cool.

Except the pawns look like tombstones.

[panader0]

4. I love chess, and have played since I was young.

But 1.2 million for a single piece is out of my range.
I still have my old set, small wooden pieces.
I used to cut out the chess match column from the paper
and put them in my box. Karpov and Kasparov, move by move.
Much fun.

[Reader Rabbit]

20. You can get a replica set via the British Museum.

I think they have several different sizes. They aren't inexpensive, but they are certainly impressive to look at!

[jberryhill]

6. "Eighty-two pieces of the set"

Eighty-two?

[panader0]

8. Three dimensional...

[jberryhill]

13. Ah, well, there you go

More evidence of ancient alien visitation.

[Honeycombe8]

7. It should've been me! nt

[Blue_true]

11. Well, make a habit of buying stuff for love. Maybe it will be you.

The painting by the street artist that you fell in love with when you looked at the painting. So you buy it for $40 and the street artist has his or her first decent meal in weeks. Two decade later the street artist is renowned, appearing on high brow shows and you have a pice of that person's original work, likely worth 1,000 times what you paid for it. Stuff like this is why people should by literature from unknown writers that speak to them, or sculpture from an unknown, or a painting by an unknown. Maybe the person will never be a great writer, painter or sculptor, but maybe you would have bought the earliest work of a person who will be taught about in high school and college classes 100 years from now, and you would have bought the work because you loved it, but your decendants will thank you for the fortune you left them.

[Honeycombe8]

16. If only. That's a rare thing to happen, I think.

I have original art work by family members. Antique books (no first editions, I think). Set of antique Metropolitan Museum art books with the original plates. An original love letter between a German woman and her German boyfriend being held in Louisiana. Antique jugs. Antique bottles. Antique table and chairs. Antique walnut bed suite. Antique silver set. Antique silver utensils. Antique art prints. One limited edition print. And so on.

Did these things increase in value? Maybe. But you have to find someone who wants to buy it, and then pay a good price for it. Usually, people end up selling these things for not much in consignment stores and flea markets.

It is a rare thing to buy something you don't think is much, and it turns out to be almost priceless and there's a group of people who are dying to get it. And there's only so much space to put doodads you buy!

I should check into selling some of my antique stuff, probably.

[YOHABLO]

9. So who will step up and buy this for 1.2 mill ?

[Blue_true]

14. Likely how the rest ended up in a museum.

A rich person will step forward, buy it and donate it to one of the two museums that hold the rest. Imagine having one of the four remaining lost pieces up in your attic, a piece that your grandma bought at a flea market and wrapped in a piece of cloth and forgot about?

[safeinOhio]

10. Last year I bought an old baseball for a quarter at a yard sale.

Sold it the next day for $30. Big deal for me.

[Blue_true]

15. And next year the person that bought it from you will have that strange looking spot on the ball

analyzed, to find out that it was spit from the pitcher Babe Ruth put on the ball during one of his final games as a Red Sox player.

[safeinOhio]

17. I hope so.

I'm happy with my part in it. I noticed the stitches went straight across instead of making little Vs. Look it up and it was from the "dead ball" era. late 1800s until about 1920. Ones like it sold on eBay for $30 to a couple hundred and this one had condition issues.
I'm just happy I spotted it.

[DFW]

18. Something like that happened in Texas ten of fifteen years ago.

Some Iraq vet in Ohio had purchased some old pamphlet (so he thought) at a garage sale for $6 or so. Someone told him it might be valuable, and he should send it to get checked out. He ended up sending it to Heritage Auctions in Dallas, who authenticated it as an original copy of The Federalist Papers from the year 1800.

It brought something like $88,000, and when Heritage learned that this was all the money the guy had in the world, they waived their seller's fee and gave the guy the whole hammer price. That isn't $1.2 million, but to the guy in Ohio, it apparently might as well have been.

[Tanuki]

22. In Nashville, a man paid $2.48 at a thrift store for what turned out to be a rare early copy

of the Declaration of Independence, commissioned by John Quincy Adams. He sold it at auction for $477,650. The thrift store is only about a mile from my house and I have been there many times.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.deseretnews.com/article/680193028/Declaration-moves-from-rags-to-riches.amp

"Tennessean Michael Sparks strolled into the Music City Thrift Store in Nashville last year, a normal part of his weekly agenda. He picked up a candelabra, a set of salt and pepper shakers and an old copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. He paid $2.48 for the latter item, a "standard price" according to store manager Kay Boner.

The "standard price" was altered significantly a year later when Sparks sold the document to a Utah investment firm for $477,650, causing a national stir.


The copy happened to be one that John Quincy Adams commissioned William Stone to make in 1820. Stone finished printing 200 copies of the famous declaration in 1823. The location of only 35 of these valuable historic documents was known until Sparks punched the number up to 36 with his thrift store find.
........

Two days before Sparks' lucky find, another Tennessean possessed the article, hanging unnoticed on his wall in the garage. Stan Caffy's wife asked him to clean out the garage and ditch all the junk he'd acquired through the years. He reluctantly took the old Declaration of Independence off his garage wall and donated it, along with other odds and ends, to the thrift store. He bought it for $10 at a yard sale 10 years ago."....(more)

[DFW]

23. I feel sorry for the guy who had bought it for $10

Not only did he buy a half million dollar item for $10, he actually lost $10 on the transaction!

[calimary]

19. Amazing story!

I love this stuff!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. Oh, my. I likewise love stories like this.

I am quite confident that nothing I own is very valuable. Although I should caution my heirs to make sure things are appraised properly.

I have a good friend who has been collecting stamps all of his adult life, more than 50 years at this point. I keep on telling him he needs to get the stamps appraised, and I also tell him that if he dies without a will, I will inform his brother and sister that he promised me everything. Since they know he and I are extremely good friends, they might buy that story. In reality, I know how he wants his worldly goods apportioned. And I am not on the list to get anything. This is a tale of Why Everyone Needs A Will.