Tuesday, 27th May 2008 (701 views)

The relatives of a scrap metal dealer could receive a substantial windfall after a gold cup he acquired in the 1930s or 1940s was dated back to the third or fourth century BC, reports say.

According to the Mail on Sunday, the 5.5-inch high pure gold cup "baffled" experts at first, because none of them had seen anything like it.

However, laboratory testing has dated the object to hundreds of years before Christ and it is now believed to have come from the Achaemenid empire, which at one time covered approximately 7.5 million sq km stretching from Iran to Libya.

What remains a mystery is how it came into the possession of William Sparks, a scrap metal dealer who his grandson says travelled Somerset in Great Britain in his caravan.

When Mr Sparks left the cup to grandson, John Webber, who thought it was made from brass or bronze and put it away in a box until he moved house last year.

The piece, which features a 'double head' design crafted from a single piece of gold, will now go under the hammer at auction and Mr Webber believes it could fetch up to £500,000.

 

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