Persian Janus Gold Cup Auctioned
Soon thieves will be crawling under your bed…
Baby Boomers, you probably think I have had one drink of Amaretta too much…but that is not the case.
In Dorchester, England an Englishman, John Webber thought nothing of the small, shiny cup, passed down from his junk dealer grandfather, which was stashed under a bed for years, until appraisers said it was an ancient Persian artifact and SOLID GOLD.
I bet that you never thought that dust bunnies had it so good! Drinking from an ancient Persian gold cup, thought to date from the third or fourth century B.C
Only 5½ inch tall, the gold cup, fetched a whopping $100,000 at an Duke’s Auction in Dorchester, England.
The identity of the winning bidder isn’t immediately known. But I can just see him brushing his teeth in the morning and using this little cup to rinse with. As I can’t stop and ponder as to how many homeless people a 100,000 would feed.
This is a marvelous little cup and features the double faced ancient Roman god Janus, the god of gates and doors who always looked to both the future and past and is often associated with beginnings and endings. The cup has two faces with braided hair and entwined snake ornaments at the forehead. Mr. Sparks acquired the cup along with two other pieces (also up for auction) in the 1930s or 1940s.
Scientists analyzed trace elements of a gold sample taken from the cup to determine its age, and analysts from Oxford University concluded that they are consistent with Archaemenid gold and goldsmithing
SO…Baby Boomers, if you have one such cup under your bed…grab it and run straight to Dorchester, England and post it on auction.
Webber’s grandfather, William Sparks, was a rag and bone man, the British term for a junk dealer, stated Duke’s Auction, who established the iron merchants Sparks and Son in Taunton, Somerset, in southwestern England, in the 1930s.
Mr. Webber has two other such items still to auction. The other two items are a second century B.C. round gold mount with a figure, probably of ancient Greek hero Ajax, who besieged Troy, and a decorated gold spoon with an image of a Roman emperor.
Still drinking out of my festive South of the Border child’s cup…do you think one day someone will find it under a bed with the dust bunnies and consider it valuable?
~The Baby Boomer Queen~
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