According to the newspapers, including The Guardian, there was busy bidding for an old deck chair that is too fragile to serve as a seat.
It's because it was retrieved from the wreck of the Titanic
The Nantucket wooden chair was on the first-class promenade deck when the luxury liner sank in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912.
The chair was sold at the auction house Henry Aldridge and Son to an unnamed UK-based collector who has a passion for buying pieces of historic importance, auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said. He added that he was “very, very pleased” with the price.
Aldridge described the chair, which was salvaged from the ocean by a team sent to recover bodies after the Titanic sank, as “one of the rarest types of Titanic collectible”.
About 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank after striking an iceberg on 14 April 1912 en route to New York from Southampton.
The deckchair was found bobbing on the surface of the Atlantic by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett, who were sent to recover the bodies of the victims.
The Mackay-Bennett’s log records six or seven deckchairs being picked up and taken back to port in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
One was given to a former crewmate, Captain Julien Lemarteleur. It has since been owned for 15 years by an English Titanic collector who kept it by a large window overlooking the sea at his home on the south coast.
The seller had never sat on it due to its fragile state and instead used it as a display item.
The chair, which was professionally conserved several years ago, had a sale estimate of £70,000 to £80,000.
It fetched just over one hundred thousand pounds.
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