Man Receives RM1.4mil After Selling Mahatma Gandhi’s Glasses at An Auction

By Charmaine Shaharin  •  24 Aug 2020 in News

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A pair of gold-rimmed rounded glasses that had belonged to the Indian social activist, Mahatma Gandhi, has been sold for £260,000 GBP (RM1,422,615) at East Bristol Auctions.

According to Hypebeast, the spectacles were purchased by an American collector via phone after six minutes of bidding on Friday (21 August). It had exceeded the original selling price of £15,000 GBP (RM82,066) making it a new record for East Bristol Auctions, as stated by auctioneer Andrew Stowe.

The previous owner of the pair of glasses, an elderly man in Mangotsfield, explained it has been passed down from generation to generation after a relative had met the political leader and social activist in South Africa in the 1920s. The money earned from the glasses would be split between the man and his daughter.

According to BBC, the man, completely unaware of the value of the glasses, had left them in a plain white envelope in a letterbox at East Bristol Auctions on Friday night. They were not collected until the following Monday morning. Andrew Stowe said,

“These glasses have been lying in a drawer for the best part of fifty years. The vendor literally told me to throw them away if they were ‘no good’. Now he gets a life-changing sum of money.”