The World of the Rare: One Precious Ming Vase

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Feb 2nd 2008 at 10:02AM

The obsession with rare antiques is one shared all around the world. One of the things that makes rare antiques so fascinating is that they often don't look that much different than other less precious versions of the same object. It often takes a practiced eye to determine the value. That's one of the reasons that Antiques Roadshow is so compelling to watch, it can be very challenging to guess what value the experts will assign to people's treasures.

One of the most interesting categories is often vases. Small, fragile and exquisitely valuable, vases, especially from ancient Chinese dynasties can fetch millions. In April of 2006, a 20-inch high blue and white Yuan Dynasty vase fetched over $2 million. That sounds rare but at the end of May 2006, casino owner Steve Wynn paid even more for a rare vase. The small copper red and white porcelain vase, is a 14th century Ming vase decorated in scrolling flowers. It is from the exceptionally rare Hongwu period and went for 78,520,000 Hong Kong dollars ($10.9 million) making it the world's most expensive vase. While many thought that Wynn, one of the world's top collectors, would squirrel the little treasure off to his collection he gave it to a Macau museum. An avid collector willing to part with a treasure immediately might be the rarest treasure of all.

Tags: ming vase, MingVase, steve wynn, the rare

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dennis Jan 31st 2008 5:15PM

I would be more impressed if he had used the money to actually do some good in the world.Sounds like he just has a big ego.
As for me I think it is worth about as much as the vase from The Brady Bunch tv show.