Are Rare Finds Really So Rare?

Written by Stephen Outram Friday, 11 November 2011 07:55

Newspapers tend to ignore the fact that rare, valuable and beautiful objects are found all the time

Media have been reporting on a 14th century brass time piece found in a Queensland farm shed.

"Mr Becker [the owner] says the quadrant was sent to his family in a box with "all sorts of things" by a deceased line of relatives from New Zealand who took it with them when they emigrated from England in the 1860s." His boys were playing in the shed and "...in this old bag of pipes, there was this perfectly shaped piece of brass which could make roads beautifully." The Courier Mail. November 10 2011

The object turns out to be one of only five known in the world and is an instrument used for providing a calendar and for telling the time. It is described as an equal hour horary quadrant and is dated 1396.

While we get caught up in the romance of chance, rare and valuable objects turn up regularly across the world. Often via people who are not aware of their value.

Have you asked all of the rare and valuable items that you hid away, in any life-time, to come back to you now... in this lifetime?

I wonder what might show up for you if you asked a question?