New York family bought a $3 garage-sale bowl in 2007; 6 years later, it was identified as rare Chinese Ding ware and sold for $2.225 million

A $3 bowl from a New York tag sale turned out to be worth a lot more than a family could have ever dreamed of. In 2007, a New York family bought the bowl, apparently thinking it was a cheap item, not a valuable piece of Chinese art. It sat in their house for a couple of years. There was no indication at the time that the small bowl would eventually be the subject of a multi-million dollar auction.

But six years after the purchase, experts took a closer look at the piece and said that it was rare Chinese Ding ware.

$3 Tag-Sale Bowl Turns Out to Be Rare Chinese Ding Ware

The bowl was identified as Northern Song Dynasty, dating back nearly 1,000 years. Reports said it was a small white bowl about 5 inches, or 12.5 centimeters, across.


That find turned what had been a $3 tag sale buy into a rare Chinese artifact.

With the bowl being prepared for auction, the significance of the identification was even more clear. According to the New York Post, Sotheby’s was set to auction the bowl in New York in March 2013.

They bought it for almost nothing in 2007 and by 2013 the bowl was considered to be a major item of Chinese ceramics.

Sotheby's Estimated the Rare Chinese Bowl at Up to $300,000

Sotheby’s had put a pre-auction estimate of between $200,000 and $300,000 on the bowl.

Even the low end of that estimate was a huge difference from the $3 the family had originally paid.

But it would sell for much more than the auction house’s estimate.

The bowl caught the bidders’ attention and it became a four-way bidding war.

Four-Way Bidding Sends the Bowl's Price Soaring

Competition pushed the price down to $2.225 million. London art dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi was the winning bidder in the four-way contest.

The final price was more than seven times the high end of Sotheby’s original estimate of $300,000. It was also hundreds of thousands of times more than the family’s original $3 purchase price.

Only One Other Similar Bowl Was Known

Another important part of the story was how rare the bowl was. Sotheby’s said only one other such bowl was known, and that was in the British Museum in London.

That put the $2.225 million auction sale into perspective. The bowl was not just an old household object that sold for a lot of money. It was identified as an unusual example of Chinese Ding ware of the Northern Song Dynasty, with only one other similar bowl known to exist.

How a $3 Buy Became a $2.225 Million Auction Sale

It took six years for the tale of the bowl to unfold. The New York family bought it at a tag sale in 2007 for $3. The bowl was then left at their home until the significance of the bowl was realized. Eventually experts identified it as a rare Chinese Ding ware bowl from Northern Song Dynasty, according to The Guardian report.

Before its 2013 auction, Sotheby’s had estimated it was worth $200,000 to $300,000. Instead bidding went a lot higher.

The bowl went for $2.225 million in a four-way bidding war to Giuseppe Eskenazi.

That little bowl that sat in a family home for years became a multimillion-dollar auction sale six years later. What started as a $3 purchase at a New York tag sale was an amazing transformation.