Logging in to the online auction, I waited patiently for the bids on my painting to start rolling in.
Slowly the numbers began creeping up: £1,000, £5,000, even ticking past the £10,000 mark, until finally, the virtual hammer came crashing down.
My painting sold for £26,500.
Hard to believe that something I found at my local tip 13 years ago could sell for so much money.
Ever since I was 10 years old, I’ve had an eye for antiques.
Granted, back then it was more a general fascination with interesting looking items than knowing things were of any real value, but still, I was obsessed.
I liked the idea of being the person to save things and I even created my own ‘antiques shop’ in my aunt’s garden shed to keep hold of the old stuff I found.
Every weekend we’d go to my aunt’s and sometimes I’d go with her when she took her bins down to the tip to look for interesting items others might throw away that could make up stock in my ‘shop’.
What started my collection was an old red chopper bike I found there – it was the first thing in my ‘shop’ and I continued to collect items from there, car boot sales and charity shops.
But it was when I was 11 years old that I made my best discovery to date.
We headed to Cranbrook tip and were joined by about six or seven cars.
I watched on as people opened up their car boots revealing their various rubbish bags and unwanted items. And then I saw it – a large picture of an armoured knight on a horse with his dog, riding past a devil and the figure of death. I thought it was cool.
Quite boldly for an 11-year-old, I decided to walk straight over to the lady whose car it was in and asked if she was throwing the painting away. When she nodded, I said, ‘Can I have it?’
She might have been shocked, but she mostly seemed delighted to be rid of it. ‘Of course!’ She beamed. ‘You’re welcome to it.’
I then took it back to my shed, had it framed and it took pride of place among my collection.
I didn’t really have a plan for it after that, I just had a gut feeling that there was something special about it and that I had to keep it safe.
For 12 years it stayed in the shed completely untouched. I’d check on it from time to time but it remained in exactly the same condition as I’d found it – which was pretty much perfect.
Then, around 18 months ago, I started having a clear out of my old antiques. I had moved lots from a shed to a lock-up container but storage was expensive. I knew that picture was so special so I decided to get it valued as it deserved to be appreciated have a good home.
I went to see the director of Rare Book Auctions in Lichfield, Jim Spencer, to find out more about my painting and to see what it might be worth.
When I showed him, he was astonished, practically shaking.
Turns out, the painting was an original version of Knight, Death and the Devil painted by a contemporary of Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci and one of the Renaissance’s most revered artists of all time, Albrecht Dürer.
I couldn’t quite believe what Jim was telling me. In fact it wasn’t until after he took it to the British Museum to be authenticated by experts that I dared to even dream he was right.
But, as he predicted, they confirmed that my painting was a genuine, 500-year-old engraving.
Then in September 2024 it went up for auction and, to my disbelief, sold for almost £27,000. Jim said it’s one of the most important prints he’s ever offered for sale and it could have sold for even more if it had not been previously mounted 100 years ago.
Still, I was not disappointed with the result.
A German collector – who will pay £33,390 with a buyer’s premium – was the winning bidder and that makes me feel really happy. Dürer was German so you could say, in some ways, it’s going home.
To think that I found it at the tip, that it was going to be discarded like rubbish, is mad to me now.
Sure, I took it home as part of a childhood hobby, but if I hadn’t, then an important part of history would be lost forever and that’s a sad thought to have.
I plan to put the money from the painting sale towards a new car – though it won’t be the Rolls Royce I dream of owning.
Although I can’t hunt for antiques as often as I did as a child. I’ve still always got my eye open.
I don’t expect to make that amount of money every time, but you never know what you might find. And as they say; one man’s trash really can be another man’s treasure.
As told to Cover Media’s Mark Worgan
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