[Jewelry making - Article 00894] - [Orchid] Childhood 'toy' revealed as ancient Persian relic

[Noel Yovovich]

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The last line will make you cringe. --Noel

    Childhood 'toy' revealed as ancient Persian relic
    http://tinyurl.com/6m4ndk

    LONDON (AFP) - An ancient gold cup mysteriously acquired by an
    English scrap metal dealer is expected to fetch close to a million
    dollars at auction after languishing for years in a shoe box under
    its current owner's bed. 

    Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the 5.5-inch
    (14-centimetre) high mug to play with when he was a child, back in
    1945. 

    He assumed the golden cup, which is decorated with the heads of two
    women facing in opposite directions, their foreheads garlanded with
    two knotted snakes, was made from brass. 

    But he decided to get it valued when he was moving house last year
    and was told it was actually a rare piece of ancient Persian
    treasure, beaten out of a single sheet of gold hundreds of years
    before the birth of Jesus Christ. 

    Experts said the method of manufacture and the composition of the
    gold was "consistent with Achaemenid gold and gold smithing" dating
    back to the third or fourth century BC. 

    The Achaemenid empire, the first of the Persian empires to rule over
    significant portions of Greater Iran, was wiped out by Alexander the
    Great in 330 BC. 

    Auction house Duke's, in Dorchester, south-west England, will put
    the cup under the hammer on June 5, with an estimate of 500,000
    pounds (630,000-euro, 988,000-dollars). 

    Webber, 70, told The Guardian newspaper that his grandfather had a
    "good eye" for antiques and picked up "all sorts" as he plied his
    trade in the town of Taunton in south-west England. 

    "Heaven knows where he got this, he never said," he added, revealing
    that as a child, he used the cup for target practice with his air
    gun.

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