Lost treasures...

I wonder what it is like to find a lost treasure? 

I read today that an amateur art lover who paid £1,200 for a painting he found in a Paris junk shop actually bought the missing part of Gustave Courbet’s infamous masterpiece The Origin Of The World. Courbet's masterpiece is the first painting to depict a ladies sensitive places in a realistic way. It was banned at first, and then the head of the model in the painting was removed to stop her being shunned by society.

Anyway this head that's been found has been valued at 35 million quid. Nice. Yes, that's the stuff that dreams and afternoon Radio 4 plays are made of. 

Lost treasures, all you have to do is find them. Not that this sort of thing ever happens to me. Yes, I know that might be stating the obvious but why shouldn’t it? After all I’ve been into attics. Mind you, apart from a few boxes of discarded Christmas decorations and the odd Girl’s Own Annual or two I’ve never found anything very interesting. Somewhere though there will be an attic where somebody has, rather carelessly, forgotten that horrible old painting that gave them nightmares or that hideously garish abstract thing that their grandfather bought back from Paris.

Yes, there are a few Breugels and Picassos awaiting discovery somewhere no doubt.

When we opened up the cellars I did discover a couple of old lemonade bottles with marbles in their necks, but no there was no Ming vase hidden away in any of the dusty corners.

On a couple of occasions I’ve been metal detecting. The anticipation when you hear that beeping is beyond belief, but after a few dozen rusty nails and bottle tops you begin to wonder why you are wandering around in a muddy field on the off-chance that you find a Saxon crown.

Back in the early days of car booting there were reports of people buying Faberge brooches and first editions by Charles Dickens almost weekly. These days though everyone seems to be an expert. Even the charity shops know the value of the junk they are selling. I don’t ever expect to ever buy a Burberry raincoat for a pound again - as I did once back in the eighties.

It’s probably all down to e-bay. If you want to know the value of anything just check it out there. That old wind-up robot that you had when you were a kid is now worth ninety quid, that original Diamond Dogs cover you can’t seem to find at least a hundred.

Even so, these flashes of lucky good fortune do still seem to happen to other people pretty frequently so there’s always hope. Besides, somewhere there’s a little old lady only too happy to part with that horrible orange teapot for a tenner.

Lovejoy anyone?