A WOMAN who bought an £8.50 vase to decorate her bathroom was stunned to discover it was an ancient Chinese relic worth thousands.
Mary Lawler, 23, unknowingly snapped up an heirloom from the Ming Dynasty while looking for an ornament to jazz up her mum’s loo.
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Her mother Amy, 49, had tasked her to find a trinket to complete their newly-decorated downstairs toilet after it was completed in 2020.
The cafe worker trawled the shelves of charity shops in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, and ended up spotting the unique 10-inch tall green vase.
Although she had only intended to “spend a fiver”, Mary made the lucky purchase after sending her mum a picture and getting the go-ahead.
The celadon antique, with a striking honeycomb design, made the perfect addition to their 1970s-style toilet.
And thanks to its bulkiness, the family were also able to utilise it as a doorstop on their porch for a number of years.
But while watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow, Mary was blown away when she noticed a similar vase earn a staggering valuation between £5,000 and £10,000.
Expert Lars Tharp delivered the good news to a bloke in an episode which aired last September.
Her mum Amy explained: “When we saw the vase that appeared on the Antiques Roadshow we thought ‘that is exactly like ours.”
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The pair were taken aback when they realised their decoration turned doorstop could potentially be worth thousands of pounds.
They rushed to get an expert’s opinion of their incredible charity shop find and took the ornament to their local auctioneers.
Mary and Amy were informed they could in fact be sitting on a gold mine, in the form of a centuries-old vase.
It was identified as a rare antique dating back to the Ming Dynasty of imperial China, which ruled between 1368 and 1644.
The thrifty mother and daughter duo are now set to flog the ancient relic for an estimated £4,000 at auction – and they are already planning on how to spend it.
A supply teacher, Amy said: “It is both shocking and exciting to learn how much it is worth.
“Mary needs to do up her old Volkswagen Golf, so I think the bulk of the money will go on that.”
Experts suspect their vase and the one shown on the BBC‘s Antiques Roadshow were originally a pair that were split up at some point.
Both were purchased at a charity shop for similar prices, suggesting the previous owner may have donated them during a clearout.
Mary’s incredible find will now go under the hammer at Lockdales Auctioneers, of Ipswich, Suffolk, on July 13.
The vase is expected to sell for a whopping 470 times what Mary paid for it, thanks to a huge demand among Chinese collectors.
Lockdales specialist Liza Machan said: “Mary bought it at a charity shop because she liked it.
“It was when she happened to be watching the Antiques Roadshow and saw a similar vase being valued that she clicked that her vase looked just the same and that she had in fact paid the same money for it as the gentleman had on the TV.”
A Lockdales spokesperson added: “We wonder if they were once a pair, which somehow ended up in the charity shop system, having been cleared from a house without the original owners realising what they had.
“There is a strong market for Chinese antiques so anything could happen.”
We previously told how a 600-year-old Chinese teapot made for a Ming Dynasty emperor was tipped to sell for £8.3million.
A tiny bronze Buddha found on a beach in Western Australia in March that dated back to the era was also valued at a whopping £100,000.
And this bloke who bought a garden feature for £20 revealed how he is now selling it for a staggering £3,000.
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