Marble bust bought for $6 and used as a doorstop could sell for $3,200,000 after experts discovered its history
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Sotheby's / Getty Stock Images
There have been some crazy things that people have used in the past to keep their doors from closing - but this has to be the most expensive.
Yes, a marble bust that was bought for roughly $6 has now been valued at an eye-watering $3.2 million after experts revealed the extent of its history.
But before we get to it, let's just run through a quick list of the craziest stories of what people have been using to keep their doors from either closing in the wind or due to tight fire-safety hinges.
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The most insane of all has to be the woman who was using a live mortar shell from World War One that her grandfather brought home - it only became apparent that it was dangerous when a neighbor called the police after witnessing it holding the front door open.
"When I was young, five of us children would play with it. I don't think he would have brought it back if he'd known it was live," Thelma Bonnett, of the UK, explained to the Daily Mail.
Then you've got the farmer who was using a meteorite as a door stop - unbeknown to him it was valued at $100,000, the porcelain vase a family used to prop a door open that turned out to be a Chinese relic worth roughly $1.25 million.
But what steals the show is Invergordon Town Council's discovery that a marble bust of the politician John Gordon, which the Scottish authority bought nearly 100 years ago for around $6, was valued at as much as $3.2 million.
In today's money, it would have cost the council roughly $500 to purchase it - having done so in 1930 as he is believed to be the founder of the town.
Following its purchase, it was never actually displayed in the town hall, and after a few years it went missing it wasn't until 1998 that someone who was aware of the bust - which was created by French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon in the early 18th century - was gobsmacked to see it be used to open a shed door on an industrial park.
It is believed to have been sculpted in 1728 while Gordon visited Rome during his 'Grand Tour' of Europe - which was common practice for young, wealthy men at that time.
The Bouchardon bust has since been purchased for in the region of $3.2 million, while the overseas buyer also told the authority they would pay for a 'museum-quality replica' of it to be displayed in the town.
It could possibly be the luckiest sculpture in the world - it survived a 19th-century castle fire - and even more dangerously, the threat of a klutzy person accidentally knocking it over!