A pair of glasses, worn by Mahatma Gandhi, were sold for £260,000, at East Bristol auction, twenty-six times the guide price.
According to a media report, the spectacles were found sticking halfway out of an auction house’s letterbox.
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The pair of glasses were bought through a phone bid from an American collector after six minutes of bidding on Friday.
The report quoted auctioneer Andrew Stowe as saying that it was a new record for East Bristol Auctions.
Stowe described the sale as “the star lot of the century”.
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It was earlier expected that the spectacles, which were worn by Mahatma Gandhi, who is called India’s ‘Father of the Nation’, would sell for about £15,000.
Stowe informed that the owner of the glasses was an elderly man from Mangotsfield.
Mangotsfield reportedly said he would split the money earned from the sale with his daughter.
The spectacles handed down from generation to generation in the family of the owner, after a relative met Gandhi on a visit to South Africa in the 1920s, said the report.
The auctioneer said, Mahatma Gandhi, who led the Indian Independence Movement, was known for giving away his possessions.
“It’s a phenomenal result. These glasses represent not only an auction record for us but a find of international historical importance,” the report quoted Stowe as saying.
The glasses had been left in a plain white envelope in a letterbox at East Bristol Auctions on a Friday night and were not collected until the following Monday morning.
“They could quite easily have been stolen or fallen out or just ended up in the bin,” Stowe said.
Stowe further said the owner had no idea of the value of the glasses and when he was told they might be worth £15,000, he “nearly had a heart attack”.