Buddha bought at car boot sale for £4 fetches £9,500

The multi-armed Buddhist deity sold for more than 2,000 times its car boot price

A small ornament picked up at a car boot sale for £4 by a West Sussex pensioner has fetched £9,500 at auction.

The six-inch statue turned out to be an 18th Century Sino-Tibetan sculpture of a Buddhist deity and his consort.

Auctioneer John Nicholson thought it might fetch up to £700 as the Asian art market had recently "softened".

Mr Nicholson described the eventual sale price of the "Buddha bonanza" as "exceptional".

'Close to tears'

The gilt-bronze sculpture depicts the multi-armed Hayagriva, a Tantric Buddhist deity, and his consort.

The woman, from Midhurst in West Sussex, who does not want to be named, said: "I still can't believe it. When the hammer went down I was stunned and close to tears."

She added: "I just loved it when I bought it two or three years ago. I thought it was different, but I couldn't believe it would go for anything like that amount."