--- title: Woman Discovers Her Cheap Ring Is Worth Millions description: Originally bought by a woman $13 at a junk sale in the U.K., the diamond in the ring is now being auctioned for $450,000. canonical: https://time.com/4791137/cheap-diamond-sothebys/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-05-23T18:11:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:43:53.654Z og:title: Woman Discovers Her Cheap Ring Is Actually Worth a Fortune og:description: Originally bought for $13 at a junk sale, it's now being auctioned for $450,000 og:url: https://time.com/4791137/cheap-diamond-sothebys/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6fd65e73815781e/6988ce9386f68e4dca6e4d65/sothebys-diamond.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2500 og:image:height: 1406 og:image:alt: BRITAIN-JEWELLERY-AUCTION-SOTHEBYS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Woman Discovers Her Cheap Ring Is Actually Worth a Fortune twitter:description: Originally bought for $13 at a junk sale, it's now being auctioned for $450,000 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6fd65e73815781e/6988ce9386f68e4dca6e4d65/sothebys-diamond.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Woman Casually Discovers Her $13 Junk-Sale Diamond Ring Is Worth Half a Million Dollars > Sponsored content. 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Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=b2c3a59e-0948-46cb-b087-360fa8a6918a&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1)  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner May 23, 2017 6:11 PM UTC  A member of Sotheby's staff poses holding a 26.27 carat, cushion-shaped, white diamond, for sale at Sotheby's auction house in London. A member of Sotheby's staff poses holding a 26.27 carat, cushion-shaped, white diamond, for sale at Sotheby's auction house in London. Justin Tallis—Getty Images  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner May 23, 2017 6:11 PM UTC It was truly a [diamond](http://time.com/money/4788095/diamond-ring-sothebys-auction/) in the rough. Some 30 years ago, a woman in west London uncovered a giant ring at a “car-boot sale” that piqued her fancy. Thinking it was costume jewelry, she picked up the sparkler for ten pounds. Now, that same gem is being auctioned off by Sotheby’s London in July for nearly half a million dollars; it’s expected to go for somewhere around a whopping 350,000 pounds, to be exact. It turns out that the dusty gem — which the owner assumed was a fake and wore regularly in her daily life about town for decades — is actually a giant, 26-carat cushion-shaped white diamond from the 19th Century, giving it that eye-watering price. The antique shape and older style of cutting had disguised its true brilliance for all those years. “They’d been to quite a few car-boot sales over the years. But they don’t have any history of collecting antiques and they don’t have any history of collecting diamonds. This is a one-off windfall, an amazing find,” the Sotheby’s London head of jewelry Jessica Wyndham [told the BBC](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39995908). (The owners do not want to be identified.) And as she added, they’re pretty excited about the prospect of the sale, even though the owner will be short one of her staple rings. “It’s a life-changing amount of money,” Wyndham noted. Despite the impressive size of the ring, other diamonds have been known to fetch more at auction. The Oppenheimer Blue, for instance, [set records](http://www.christies.com/features/The-Oppenheimer-Blue-Results-7395-3.aspx) for its $57.5 million sale price in 2016; that one is just under 15 carats. And the Pink Star diamond wowed at sale when it went for [$71 million in April](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39486749). 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