LONDON (AFP) — An ancient gold cup mysteriously acquired by a British scrap metal dealer and kept in a shoe box for years by its unwitting owner sold for 50,000 pounds (63,000 euros, 98,000 dollars) Thursday.
The 5.5-inch (14-centimetre) object -- which is decorated with the heads of two women looking in opposite directions and knotted snakes -- went under the hammer in Dorchester, southwest England.
Its owner, John Webber, said last month he hoped to get up to 500,000 pounds for it after experts told him it was not made from brass, as he long assumed, but rare ancient Persian gold.
But a spokeswoman for auction house Duke's said Thursday the guide price was between 50,000 to 100,000 pounds.
Webber, 70, said he was bequeathed the treasure by his grandfather, who plied his trade around the streets of Taunton, also in southwest England, and only decided to get it valued when he was moving house last year.
Experts said the method of manufacture and the composition of the gold was "consistent with Achaemenid gold and gold-smithing" dating back to the third or fourth century BC.
The Achaemenid empire, the first of the Persian empires to rule over significant portions of Greater Iran, was wiped out by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.
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