Bidding clash pushes £250 vase to £381k
A VASE that cost its owner just £250 fetched £381,000 at auction after a “battle of egos” bidding war.
An OAP whose husband bought the 12in piece in the 1970s had taken it to a valuation day in a shoebox.
She disliked the vase by artist Hans Coper and put it in a cupboard after her husband died.
When Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter, Devon, told her it could fetch £6,000, she said their estimate was too generous.
But two major collectors slugged it out and it went for £305,000, before fees, to set a record for the artist.
Auctioneer Nic Saintey said: “We had two of the biggest collectors of pottery in the world and it became a clash of egos.”
It topped the £181,250 paid for a Coper in 2011.