So just for a dry run, let's start off with a wonderful auction find... part of a job lot at my regular house, in a box mixed in with a few other things that also turned out to be gems, an obviously ancient leather mug...
Turns out this ancient mug was over 400 years old... you can see extra wear in 2 bands around the rim and above the bottom part of the handle, which would undoubtedly have been the result of the mug being bound with silver, long since removed... and the clincher was that it is almost identical to a mug known to have been used by Oliver Cromwell.
This wasn't the only treasure in that auction box... a tupperware container bearing the printed label "Late Medieval stained glass" turned out to be no more than the truth - a wonderful deep red and yellow rondel of textured stained glass, suggested by Bonhams of Chester (with whom I checked) as likely to be medieval and date from the late 17th or early 18th century...
And one more sweet little gem... a little porcelain pot, moulded to depict a mandarin seated on an elephant. The mandarin was missing his head, which turned up in the bottom of the box, and allowed me to effect an almost invisible repair. The backstamp mark, although very faint, obviously belonged to Schafer & Vater, a German porcelain firm, and the lidded pot would date to the 1920s or 30s, a real art deco gem...
End result - from a box that cost me about £45, I made around £650 on ebay...
Oh dear lord - if only all finds were like this... I would be a wealthy woman. And none the worse for that I suppose... but chance is a fine thing...
