May 28 2008
RamblerChild’s Toy Discovered to be Ancient Relic
An ancient gold cup is expected to sell for close to a million dollars at auction after hiding for years in a shoe box under its current owner’s bed.
Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the mug to play with when he was a child in 1945.
He assumed the cup was made from brass. It is decorated with the heads of two women facing in opposite directions. Their foreheads are garlanded with two knotted snakes.
He decided to get it appraised when he was moving last year and was told then that it was a rare piece of ancient Persian treasure.
Experts said the method of manufacture and the composition of the gold was “consistent with Achaemenid gold and gold smithing” and date it back to the third or fourth century BC.
The Achaemenid empire was the first of the Persian empires to rule over significant portions of Greater Iran and was wiped out by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.
Auction house Duke’s will auction the cup on June 5 and it’s estimated it will sell for 500,000 pounds (630,000-euro, $988,000-dollars).
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I wonder how the vase ever ended up in the scrap heap in the first place?