Yard Sale Ming Bowl Windfall

In 2020, an antiques enthusiast browsing a yard sale in New Haven, Connecticut, bought a small white porcelain bowl with cobalt blue flower designs for $35, not knowing it was a 15th-century Chinese piece from the early Ming dynasty. Experts later identified it as an “exceptionally rare” imperial bowl from the reign of the Yongle Emperor, one of only seven such examples known in the world. When it went to auction at Sotheby’s in March 2021, the bowl sold for nearly $722,000.

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