In the 1980s, a Swedish flea-market buyer paid just over SEK 20 for a small Buddha statue; four decades later, experts traced it to the Ming dynasty, and it sold for SEK 2.44 million at auction
- A tiny Buddha statue bought for just over SEK 20 at a Swedish flea market in the 1980s has turned into a multimillion-kronor discovery after experts identified it as a rare work from China’s Ming dynasty.
- The gilt-bronze statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, which had spent decades in a private Swedish home, fetched a final price of SEK 2,437,500 at Stockholms Auktionsverk’s Asian Fine Art Sale on December 11, 2025.
- The amount is more than 120,000 times the original purchase price of just over SEK 20.
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- A tiny Buddha statue bought for just over SEK 20 at a Swedish flea market in the 1980s has turned into a multimillion-kronor discovery after experts identified it as a rare work from China’s Ming dynasty.
- The gilt-bronze statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, which had spent decades in a private Swedish home, fetched a final price of SEK 2,437,500 at Stockholms Auktionsverk’s Asian Fine Art Sale on December 11, 2025.
- The amount is more than 120,000 times the original purchase price of just over SEK 20.
Sources: Times of India