Not many people would pay thousands of dollars for a TV stand, let alone millions. But one French engineer unwittingly had a multi-million dollar piece holding up his television for many years, before the value of the piece was discovered following his passing.
The engineer had purchased an elegant cedar and lacquered chest in 1970 for a reported $150. He had used the piece as both a television stand and a bar for nearly forty years before his passing. In reality, the piece was the Marazin chest, a Japanese lacquer box that was worth far more than he had given it credit for.
The piece was crafted in the 1640s in Koami Nagashige, Japan. The TV stand then travelled with other like boxes and exchanged hands over a dozen times before it suddenly vanished from sight in the 1940s.
The Victoria & Albert Museum sought out the chest for decades, looking to fill their collection of such chests, but to no avail. Unbeknownst to the museum, the piece was located only blocks from their location. That had to be a rather frustrating fact, given the time and effort given to locating the antique.
The cedar chest with its cold lacquer, which was labeled as a TV stand, has now been sold to The RiJksmuseum in Amsterdam at auction for 7.3 million euros, the equivalent of $9.6 million US dollars.
