Random mug turns out to be ancient artifact
In 1945, John Webber's grandfather, a scrap metal dealer, gave his son a random mug to play with that he had picked up along the way. John always thought it was brass and kept it with a bunch of other random stuff in a shoebox under his bed. Then when John, now 70, was moving out of his home, he decided to have the mug appraised. Turns out, the mug is gold and was made in the third or fourth century BC. It's expected to sell at auction for nearly a million bucks. Antiques Roadshow, eat your heart out! From AFP:
Link (via Fortean Times)Webber... told The Guardian newspaper that his grandfather had a "good eye" for antiques and picked up "all sorts" as he plied his trade in the town of Taunton in south-west England.
"Heaven knows where he got this, he never said," he added, revealing that as a child, he used the cup for target practice with his air gun.
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A scrap metal dealer cant tell gold from brass? I'd like to see this piece get by ny uncle Harold.
Good thing he's got a few solid years to enjoy it!
Sweet. But now I've got to go through all my crap and get it appraised.
Ah, a student of the Henry Jones Jr school of destructive archeology!
Undoubtably booty from battles hundreds, thousands of years ago, changing hands raid after raid.
who's face?
the Lady.
I'm wondering when the Iranians will chirp up claiming it was looted from one of their archeological sites...
I believe it's "BCE" nowadays, not "BC".
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era
- Hi, I would like to know the price of this cup I inherited from..
- This piece of trash? Where did you get it? Happy Meal? Here throw it into this trash can. Carefully tho.
Too bad it can't talk and tell us of its previous owners...
Perhaps it could be one of the vessels used at the feast of Ahasuerus described in the first chapter of the Book of Esther. That's right the face is an image of Queen Vashti!
is that a double serpent crown?
That was obviously Thulsa Doom's cup. http://tinyurl.com/4wdz8t
And I agree, it seems odd that a gold cup was thought to be brass.
Honestly, if you were sold a cup that looks like gold for $10, would you actually take the time and money to take it to an appraiser? I'm sure everyone along the line assumed the last owner was smart enough to have it checked, and didn't want to waste money just to be told it was a piece of crap.
Perhaps we could program a computer to tell us of its previous owners, a self-recording artifact, designed looking forward to satisfying the curiosity of futurity... but it would probably be just a dead language to them, like French is Fry's Great to the power of thirty Grand-Nephew...
he must have been a terrible marksman. wouldn't a bb gun leave some serious divots?
Is it just me or is this cup something that Szukalski would've loved to have heard about? Mother-Dawn, The Flood Snakes, Rise and Fall, heck .. its a *cup*.
*sigh* I wish there were more Protong'ers around ..
The two snakes on the forehead of the face are the same from Conan the Barbarian. Maybe Arnold will buy it.
Okay, admit it . . . who almost instinctively made the "Two snakes, like this!" motion with their fists when they read Smax's comment?
18
duh, it was an air gun.
@#22 You might want to look up "air gun"; they fire pellets, not air. A BB gun is indeed most likely the sort he had.
Why does this remind me of the Greenhalgh family story in the UK? Their son forged many pieces that were then passed off by good old 80 yr old dad as ancient artifacts that happened to be in the family for yrs. As with this story and the Greenhalgh's, the British Museum were greedily happy to state the items were authentic. Artifacts with no provenance should be a tip off for something fishy and should be scrutinized!
It looks like its made of doré gold, which is the unrefined product of artisanal mining, and requires refining into pure gold. This is why it appears tarnished, because the impure metals content is oxidized.
F6
Stuff turns up. Not exactly the same scale of rarity, but a friend handed me a set of 6 tablespoons he'd just bought at a garage sale. He said they looked old. They were from 1785, by Hester Bateman. I sold them to an English collector for him. Now my friend looks at me funny because I identified the year and maker on sight, which was a fluke.
#23 jeeze, nevermind