Finding Teapot Treasures & The $36Million Teacup

[Brockodile]

Hello all, I am new here but I have used this forum as a reference for many years. This is a bit of an introduction as well as a big question.

I was recently in Thailand, where I visited a fascinating tea community in Santikhiri, (formerly Mae Salong) - where the last stronghold of the Chinese Nationalist Army was pushed back to in 1949. Here they grew opium and were hired mercenaries for the King of Siam to keep Communists from invading Thailand at the time all the way until 1982. After many decades as stateless-guerrilla-opium-warlords, they were granted Thai citizenship by the King after successfully protecting the Thai borders against Communism and War. Along with citizinshep, they were given a legally acceptable crop to grow in place of opium - oolong tea.

Wiki on Santikhiri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santikhiri

On the ride up the windy mountain, I met a fellow Canadian who has been living in China for the past several years teaching English. As a hobby, he travels around Asia finding lost stories about old Chinese generals and historical figures that the Chinese have either forgotten about or no one has taken the time to publish information on them. He writes articles on what he finds - in this case he was interested in the lost culture preserved here by the surviving Yunnan people living here.

Not only is *all* the oolong tea I bought at the several plantations here the best I have ever tasted, but this experience brought me to my first Yixing teapot.

I had learned that this is where many wealthy Chinese nationals living in Taiwan (where the rest of the Nationalists fled to after Mao) had come to buy Yixing teapots and historical relics which is what inflated the price of them and sparked international interest many years ago. (whether this is fully true or not, I don't know)

I have been a long time tea drinker and I had been waiting for an adventure and an experience of my own to pick my own Yixing up so every cup I had, I would be reminded of this. I love them!

My question is, because of China's history, many treasures are lost in closets or on shelves at grandma's house, has anyone ever found any treasures hiding in garage sales, while traveling abroad, at flea markets or thrift stores? I am asking because I recently read of this teacup going for $36 Million USD: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014 ... llion-cup/

This is something I would have passed by if I saw it sitting on a table at a garage sale - and there are countless other historical items lost to war and migration over the last century in China. So much of the upper class who owned these pieces were slaughtered and displaced. So much of these artifacts are just floating around out there, waiting to be found like Spanish galleon treasure in the ocean.

Though I am not the first person to recognize this, comprehensible resources are scarce, obscure, incomplete, in another language, and sometimes very hard to piece together concisely because of too much 'fluff' content. I am wondering if any work has been done to make a 'cheat sheet' without all the scholarly and historical mumbo-jumbo for common people like myself to keep an eye open for on the used kitchen supplies shelves. If not, then I would like to formulate one using the knowledge present here and maybe one day it will help myself or someone else locate a lost treasure.

I will leave you with one last example of what I mean - this damaged Chinese bowl was brought back to England from China in 1900 by a British general, used as a bed for a cat to sleep in by the general's children/grandchildren, and auction appraisers gave it an estimate of $200.

Well, the interest from China was so great, it sold for $167,000.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... 08000.html

My point is that not even the auction appraisers, who are experts in their fields, can figure this stuff out - and this is very, very common to see undervalued auction items go for 10, 20, 300x the estimate.

Thanks for reading.

[hobin]

here you sometimes get nice vintage yixing teapots for a song if you know what to look for... (in my experience no millionaire teapot, though )

http://www.jauce.com/category-leaf/2084 ... age=1&n=20

[kyarazen]

there's a reason why some of these plates (cracked and busted) could sell for so much money at an auction, it generally is a "one-off" occurance, and the buyer was in the heat of the moment. it could be unlikely that a second piece would meet such valuation.

in approaching chinese ware efflux from china, there are no hard and fast rules, but just a need to distinguish what are the peasantry wares and the "official" wares, of which wares for the officials are way way way superior in workmanship, firing, quality control, and were never allowed to be exported prior to the start of ROC. everything else that went onto the ships to be exported are mass produced, rough peasantry wares. you can find tons of wares that are from shipwrecks, tomb raided, settlement excavated etc. there are over 400 shipwrecks in indonesia alone, not to mention those in south china sea and other parts of south east asia. one wreck can produce tens of thousands of pieces of ceramics, to which the best have been selected/fleeced, and the rest making it to the antique wholesale market. antique vendors, instead of selling large lots, will choose to sell piece by piece to create the scarcity effect that is price regulatory. too big a volume results in valuation decrease. authentic song dynasty teabowls for tens of dollars anyone?

the market on the whole is cooling significantly, with Xi Jinping's 扫黑 etc, gone were the days when the chinese would come to south east asia to sweep everything, both real and fake, since both could be easily sold in mainland. many of the richer chinese, having made western and asian dollars, have taken upon themselves to recover pieces of history and precious "official" tea wares that had been raided from the chinese palaces in the end of Qing, during the 8 nation alliance. so in the flea markets of these 8 nations, there is a chance of looting something decent if you have a good eye. those significant pieces make it to the auction houses though.

if you are specifically looking for teawares or teapot treasures, there arent much troves anymore. if you want nice ming and qing teapots, you may have to consider looking into the tomb raids and excavations around fujian. a taiwanese collector had shown me some pieces of qing era ju lun zhu.. where over 500 pieces was amassed from graveyards in fujian.

if you are interested in "export" ming/qing tea wares, of which they are almost all Qing and later, you can look around the fleamarkets and the raiders in Vietnam, Thailand. Yixing from shipwrecks in the region are limited to several shipwrecks and many are from mid to later Qing, with the exposure to seawater causing the pots to become too porous and with receded firings. what is the true value of some of these pots? it remains very very very subjective... and in the eye/depths of the pockets of the beholder

I had learned that this is where many wealthy Chinese nationals living in Taiwan (where the rest of the Nationalists fled to after Mao) had come to buy Yixing teapots and historical relics which is what inflated the price of them and sparked international interest many years ago. (whether this is fully true or not, I don't know)

My question is, because of China's history, many treasures are lost in closets or on shelves at grandma's house, has anyone ever found any treasures hiding in garage sales, while traveling abroad, at flea markets or thrift stores? I am asking because I recently read of this teacup going for $36 Million USD: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014 ... llion-cup/

This is something I would have passed by if I saw it sitting on a table at a garage sale - and there are countless other historical items lost to war and migration over the last century in China. So much of the upper class who owned these pieces were slaughtered and displaced. So much of these artifacts are just floating around out there, waiting to be found like Spanish galleon treasure in the ocean.

Though I am not the first person to recognize this, comprehensible resources are scarce, obscure, incomplete, in another language, and sometimes very hard to piece together concisely because of too much 'fluff' content. I am wondering if any work has been done to make a 'cheat sheet' without all the scholarly and historical mumbo-jumbo for common people like myself to keep an eye open for on the used kitchen supplies shelves. If not, then I would like to formulate one using the knowledge present here and maybe one day it will help myself or someone else locate a lost treasure.

I will leave you with one last example of what I mean - this damaged Chinese bowl was brought back to England from China in 1900 by a British general, used as a bed for a cat to sleep in by the general's children/grandchildren, and auction appraisers gave it an estimate of $200.

Well, the interest from China was so great, it sold for $167,000.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... 08000.html

My point is that not even the auction appraisers, who are experts in their fields, can figure this stuff out - and this is very, very common to see undervalued auction items go for 10, 20, 300x the estimate.

[chrl42]

Not much in garages anymore..those pots are gone and lost during Japanese invasions and the CR..

As kyarazen posted..most of antique come from graveyards or overseas Chinese' garages

[Tead Off]

Treasures exist all over the world. The key is the knowledge to identify them. Sometimes it is just sheer luck, but for the professional, it is something they are actively searching for and their livelihood depends on it. So, they are in a more likely position to spot something valuable than let's say you are. Many people I know have made millions on things that were just under the nose of the less knowledgeable. But, it is hard work and you have to put in the endless hours, days, years, of wading through a lot of things to get to a treasure that is undervalued or unrecognized.

[Brockodile]

So are there some excellent resources either online or in print so I can become that educated person who can spot those treasures which are out there.

[Bok]

I think only experience in handling and seeing the real thing first hand will be able to make you that expert. So make some collector friends, who own the real deal.

[theredbaron]

I had learned that this is where many wealthy Chinese nationals living in Taiwan (where the rest of the Nationalists fled to after Mao) had come to buy Yixing teapots and historical relics which is what inflated the price of them and sparked international interest many years ago. (whether this is fully true or not, I don't know)

That story is actually quite wrong.
Thailand had since hundreds of years active Chinese communities, and several rounds of migrations from China. All along Chinese pieces of art made it to Thailand, were appreciated by Thai Chinese, and by Thai aristocrats. The area that is now Thailand has been since a very long time a center of commerce. Taiwanese indeed massively bought Yixing pots during the 80's and 90's in Thailand, but those were primarily Qing dynasty pots, ROC pots, and Cultural revolution era pots which have been imported to Thailand in large numbers.
The Taiwanese who went to the golden triangle mostly went to run the factories making the famed No 4 heroin, and didn't exactly have the arts on their minds

As to some of the remainder - be a bit skeptical about Thai state propaganda, don't believe everything you hear and read. Especially now, as we have a not very nice dictatorship.

[pizzapotamus]

That story is actually quite wrong.
Thailand had since hundreds of years active Chinese communities, and several rounds of migrations from China. All along Chinese pieces of art made it to Thailand, were appreciated by Thai Chinese, and by Thai aristocrats. The area that is now Thailand has been since a very long time a center of commerce. Taiwanese indeed massively bought Yixing pots during the 80's and 90's in Thailand, but those were primarily Qing dynasty pots, ROC pots, and Cultural revolution era pots which have been imported to Thailand in large numbers.
The Taiwanese who went to the golden triangle mostly went to run the factories making the famed No 4 heroin, and didn't exactly have the arts on their minds

As to some of the remainder - be a bit skeptical about Thai state propaganda, don't believe everything you hear and read. Especially now, as we have a not very nice dictatorship.

I feel like I've missed something or am just reading it wrong but you seem to be using Thailand and Taiwan interchangeably when they are different places?

[theredbaron]

I feel like I've missed something or am just reading it wrong but you seem to be using Thailand and Taiwan interchangeably when they are different places?

You missed something. I live in Thailand. I know the difference between Thailand and Taiwan.

Simple. Thailand has many Yixing tea pots which have been imported since the Qing dynasty from China. Taiwanese traders went to Thailand and bought these pots in the 80's and 90's, when they were still quite cheap.
While most of the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan from China after the Communists won the civil war, some remnants went through Burma and settled in the Golden Triangle (which formerly was the borderland between Thailand, Laos and Burma, but nowadays Thailand's part of the Golden Triangle is largely pacified and a tourist attraction), where they became warlords, drug lords and mercenary armies, also for the CIA in the secret war in Laos, etc. Most of them resettled in Taiwan, but some remained. The ones here in Thailand have now all received Thai citizenship, and gave up opium farming and trading. Some remnants in Burma are still part of warlord country.

[pizzapotamus]

What I'd missed was the person you were quoting, I only read the quote and didn't remember the full post where he was speaking of Thailand so it made no sense but is completely my fault, sorry.

[theredbaron]

What I'd missed was the person you were quoting, I only read the quote and didn't remember the full post where he was speaking of Thailand so it made no sense but is completely my fault, sorry.

No worries, happens