A small white bowl bought by an anonymous upstate New York family for about $3 at a tag sale in summer 2007 sold at Sotheby’s in New York on March 19, 2013, for $2.225 million, above its $200,000–$300,000 presale estimate. Sotheby’s specialists identified it as a roughly 1,000-year-old Northern Song Dynasty Ding ware bowl.
The family had kept the bowl as living room decor for five to six years before seeking an appraisal after noticing rising collector interest in Chinese art. Sotheby’s said only one other bowl with a similar size, form and near-identical decoration was known.
