5 charity shop bargains which sold for thousands at auction - from vases to statutes

A tiny vase which was bought for £2.50 from a charity shop in Surrey is expected to go for £10,000 at auction. 

The item was bought by a couple who noticed small marks etched into the bottom of the four-inch vase, which was later confirmed to be a masterpiece from one of Japan's most famous artists from the Meiji period, Namikawa Yasuyuki. 

“The beautiful work by Yasuyuki’s Kyoto studio is held in several collections and is highly sought-after,” said specialist Cliona Kilroy, co-director of Canterbury Auction Galleries. “He and Namikawa Sōsuke were the most famous cloisonné artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries—the ‘Golden Age’ of enamelling in Japan.”

The item is to go on auction on 30 July, at Canterbury Auction Galleries in Kent. 

Here are five other charity shop finds which have later been revealed as genuine works of art. 

Ming Dynasty Vase 

A 23-year-old woman bought a Ming-dynasty era vase, which dates between 1368-1644, for just £8.50 at a charity shop in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. 

Mary Lawer, 23, spotted the 10inch vase and learnt of the vase's value after seeing a similar vase on BBC Antiques Roadshow. 

She took it to Lockdales Auctioneers, of Ipswich, Suffolk, who confirmed its importance and they have now sold it on her behalf. The vase achieved a hammer price of £3,400, with auctioneers fees taking the final figure paid by a UK private collector to £4,195.

The Emperor's Vase 

An unnamed charity shopper bought a vase for just £1 in Hertfordshire, which turned out to be the Qianlong Emperor’s vase. 

It sold for £484,000.

When the buyer initially listed it for sale on eBay, he was flooded with messages so decided to get it professionally valued. 

Experts at Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, discovered it was made for the Qianlong Emperor who was in power from 1735 to 1796.

The eight-inch vase is yellow – a colour reserved for the emperor, and also bears two iron-red seal marks that read ‘Qianlong Chen han’ or ‘the Qianlong Emperor’s own mark’.

An oil painting 

An Antiques Roadshow guest bought an oil painting for £25, after initially going to the shop to buy a raincoat for her children. 

The painting, which is an oil on canvas picture of the Western Scottish islands Rum and Eigg, took her interest as she had just been on a family holiday there. 

But on the show, fine art expert Grant Ford told her she had had a "tremendous piece of luck" as the colourist painting was by Glaswegian artist John Cunningham and was worth £4,000 to £6,000.

Georgian diamond and ruby ring 

Another guest on Antiques Roadshow was surprised after she bought a ring for £1 from a charity shop which, when evaluated, turned out to be a Georgian ring. 

The ring, which was made in India, contains a 22-carat fold base and is adorned in diamonds and rubies, was evaluated to be worth £2,000 and is 200 years old. 

Tibetan goddess statue 

An unnamed woman bought a 6-inch gilt bronze Buddhist antique in a car boot sale for £25, which has now been sold for almost £20,000. 

She negotiated its purchase and then had it examined by experts who identified it as a rare 16th-century depiction of the Tibetan goddess Green Tara. It was sold at Bellmans Auctioneers of Billingshurst, West Sussex.

Auctioneers first told her it could be worth £5,000 - it was sold for more than £15,500 after attracting great interest from the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

It would have originally been owned by a wealthy Tibetan Buddhist but it is unclear when or how it was imported to the UK.