Among the noteworthy discoveries online appraisal company ValueMyStuff - recently acquired by web-based auction company, Barnebys - has made are a medieval chastity belt, pictured, sold for £2 000 (over R37000), a mid-19th century golf ball valued at £20 000 and a bizarre bid by one man to estimate how much his mother-in-law would fetch on auction.
The chastity belt was submitted by an owner who thought it was an old metal implement to control horses. But the ValueMyStuff expert immediately knew its real role was to - somewhat uncomfortably - curb carnal cravings while husbands were fighting wars.
The request to value a mother-in-law was sent two days before April Fool’s Day by a man who wanted to tease his mother-in-law.
ValueMyStuff took it all in their stride and its expert drafted the reply: “Sinuous female lines draped in classical dress, with free-flowing hair, raised on a plinth base, in need of some restoration to fill hairline cracks, in overall good condition - but in need of some attention commensurate with age”.
It is not known if the mother-in-law subsequently sought an auction assessment of the man she warned her daughter against. And the 19th-century golf ball? Well, the man who lost it has long given up searching for it - and the meaning of life.