A woman who tried to 'improve' a rare Chinese vase with a hammer is having to face up to the knowledge she has knocked £200,000 of its value.
The Qing dynasty porcelain vase would have been worth £250,000 in good condition but is now expected to sell for about £50,000.
The vase already had a chip in its rim when the woman, who has not been named, knocked the rest off with a hammer to "even it out".
The woman was so unimpressed with the vase after her "improvements" she gave it away to a friend to put daffodils in.
Years later, she returned to her friend's house and saw it in her garden. Taking a new liking to it, she asked for it back.
She kept it on her windowsill and was about to throw it away when she remembered seeing a similar vase that had fetched almost £200,000 at a recent auction.
She sent a picture of it to Salisbury auction house Woolley and Wallis with an email saying: "Is it worth hanging on to or, because of the damage is it worthless and should I just bin it! It came from my great grandparents."
Clare Durham, an auction house spokeswoman said: "She emailed us with a photograph and we instantly told her not to bin it, as she was planning to do."
The vase, otherwise undamaged after the unusual re-modelling, was subsequently dated from the Qing dynasty, between 1821 to 1850.
Woolley and Wallis are now selling the piece with a pre-sale estimate of £30,000 but expect it to reach double that amount.
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