£4 car boot buy sells for £9,500

A TIBETAN sculpture bought for £4 at a car boot sale by a pensioner has been sold for £9,500 at an auction.

The six-and-a-half-inch-high statue turned out to be an 18th-century Sino Tibetan gilt-bronze sculpture of the multi-armed Hayagriva, a Tantric Buddhist deity, and his consort.

The figure went into auction at John Nicholson’s of Fernhurst, West Sussex, on December 4 and sold for more than 2,000 times the amount the pensioner paid for it.

The woman from Midhurst, West Sussex, who originally purchased it and wished not to be named, said: “I still can’t believe it. When the hammer went down I was stunned and close to tears.”