Gandhi’s gold-rimmed spectacles found in letter box, sold at auction for over Rs 2.5 crore

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See the moment Gandhi's Glasses sell for £260,000 – we found them just 4 weeks ago in our letterbox, left there by a gentleman whose uncle had been given them by Gandhi himself. An incredible result for an incredible item! Thanks to all those who bid.

A post shared by East Bristol Auctions (@eastbristolauctions) on Aug 21, 2020 at 11:13am PDT

“A colleague of mine picked them up, ripped open the envelope and found a brief note inside saying, ‘These glasses belonged to Gandhi, give me a call,” Andrew Stowe, one of the auctioneers, told Sky News. “I read the note, carried on with the morning duties, and then around lunchtime I thought, ‘Well let’s give this gentleman a call, let’s see what the story is.”

The spectacles were passed on from generation to generation within the seller’s family, after his uncle received them as a gift while visiting South Africa in the 1920s, BBC reported. Gandhi was known for giving away his personal items to people in need or to those who helped him in some way.

The auctioneers had originally estimated that the glasses would sell for about £15,000 (over Rs 14 lakh). They finally sold for almost 20 times of the estimated price, marking the auction house’s biggest sale ever.

“These glasses have been lying in a drawer for the best part of fifty years. The vendor literally told me to throw them away if they were ‘no good’. Now he gets a life-changing sum of money,” Stowe told BBC.

In 2009, liquor baron Vijay Mallya bought several of Mahatma Gandhi’s personal belongings worth $1.8 million (around Rs 9.3 crore) at an auction in New York. The items included — a pair of glasses, a pair of worn leather sandals, a pocket watch, and a simple brass bowl and plate.

In an attempt to stall the auction, the Indian government had earlier approached the US Justice Department to enforce an interim injunction passed by the Delhi High Court. However, the auctioneer refused to withdraw the items. Finally, Mallya purchased the memorabilia, claiming that he was “bidding for the country”.

Gandhi became synonymous with the iconic round-rimmed Windsor-style glasses, common during the period when he was studying law in England in the late 1800s and 1900s.

While initially used infrequently, the glasses became a regular feature during the national movement and Gandhi’s civil disobedience protests in India.

(With inputs from AFP, BBC, PTI)