Chinese vase fetches $83 million

It was just an old Chinese vase that had been in the family for 80 years. It turned out to be much more.

When the intricately painted 18th-century piece went on the block at Bainbridges, a small suburban London auction house, it sold for a record $83 million Thursday, scooped up by a Chinese buyer.

"How do you anticipate the Chinese market?" asked the shocked auctioneer, Peter Bainbridge. "It's totally on fire."

The sale price was more than 40 times the pre-sale estimate and a record for a Chinese work of art — an outcome Bainbridge called "a fairy tale" for the family who owned the vase.

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