London: An ancient Egyptian bronze cat that was nearly thrown in the trash has sold for a whopping 52,000 pounds at an auction in the UK.
Auctioneer David Lay found the cat sculpture, thought to be 2,500 years old, during a house clearance in west Cornwall.
The bronze sculpture bought by a "prominent London dealer" was expected to sell for as much as 10,000 pounds, but went for five times that estimate.
The original owners had no idea of the artefact's value and were going to throw it in a skip, BBC news reported.
The "perfectly proportioned" cat was owned by Douglas Liddell who died in 2003. He was a one-time managing director of Spink and Son, a London firm that handled sales of Egyptian antiquities.
The cat, complete with gold earrings, has been dated to approximately 700 to 500 BC - and the auctioneer said it would have been commissioned by an Egyptian of considerable means and high status.
"We were delighted and surprised to find this 26th Dynasty bronze bust of a cat, complete with it's original gold earrings in a local cottage," the auction house said.
"However, once we discovered that it had originally been owned by a one-time managing director of Spink & Son, one of London's oldest and greatest art dealing institutions, who had retired to Cornwall, it's presence here made much more sense," it said.
