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Charlotte Penketh-King & Nicola Roy & Saffron Otter

TV auctioneer shares which £1.50 charity shop finds are worth £100

A TV personality and auctioneer has been helping charity shoppers spot items that are worth the most money.

Charles Hanson, an expert auctioneer who has a talent for spotting the best buys instantly, has been challenging his Twitter followers to spot the most valuable item from an array of charity shop stock.

He has been trawling charity shops taking pictures of the shelves, with the priciest items hidden in plain sight.

The items had been on sale ranging from £1.50 to £4 - but were actually worth up to £100 at auction, the Mirror reports.

One shelf, which Charles browsed last Saturday, boasted a selection of donated items including a late Georgian tooled and gilt Morocco leather box, dating back to around 1810.

It only cost him a couple of pounds to buy from the charity shop, but had an estimated value of £50-£70.

The auctioneer posts pictures of shelves on Twitter for his followers to find the moneymakers - in this case, it was the Chinese porcelain tankard (Charles Hanson / SWNS)

Similarly, Charles came across a chipped Chinese 18th-century porcelain tankard dating back to 'Emperor Qianlung 1735-99' - with an estimated value of £70-100.

It was hidden away on the bottom shelf of the store, again only costing him a few pounds to buy.

Some of Charles' other recent discoveries included a 1930s Shelley vase worth £40-£60, sold for just £1, an Edwardian Christmas sweet tin, and a silver sugar castor from 1913.

Charles owns an auctioneers in Derby (Charles Hanson / SWNS)

Charles tweets his 'Track the Treasure' quiz every weekend, and it has gained him 10,000 new followers in a month.

Charles, who owns Hansons Auctioneers in Derby, said: "I have had an amazing response to my 'Track the Treasure' quiz on Twitter – and gained thousands of new followers.

"It’s all down to everyone’s ensuring fascination with antiques - plus most people like a good quiz challenge."

This Shelley vase "stuck out like a sore thumb" to Charles (Charles Hanson / SWNS)

The auctioneer was inspired to start his quizzes after seeing an "ugly" brown Shelley vase at a charity shop this summer, which he bought for £1.

He snapped a picture of it on the shelf surrounded by other objects, and thought it would be fun to ask his Twitter followers to "track the treasure".

Charles has been blown away by the response, and decided to continue doing the quiz on a weekly basis.

He explained: "I’ve been amazed by the response. My first 'Track the Treasure' post had more than 400 likes and hundreds of people guessed which item was the potential treasure.

"It caused such a stir that I thought I must try to do this again. People like it so much that I have picked up 10,000 new Twitter followers in less than a month!"

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