22/08/2020 13:00
Gandhi's glasses left in letterbox sell for £260k
A pair of Mahatma Gandhi's glasses have sold for £260,000 after they were found sticking halfway out of an auction house's letterbox.
The spectacles were bought through a phone bid from an American collector after six minutes of bidding on Friday, BBC reports.
Auctioneer Andrew Stowe said it was a new record for East Bristol Auctions and described it as "the star lot of the century".
The glasses had been expected to sell for about £15,000.
Stowe said the owner of the glasses was an elderly man from Mangotsfield who said he would split the money with his daughter.
They had been handed down from generation to generation in the owner's family, after a relative met Gandhi on a visit to South Africa in the 1920s.