A worn exhibition catalogue, produced by the Die Brucke group of German expressionist artists, has sold with stunning results in Hamburg.
Bought for a mere €5 at a Paris flea market earlier this year, it sold for €27,000 ($34,694) - a rise of 540,000% in value.
 The exhibition catalogue is thought to be one of a kind |
The volume also far surpassed its high estimate of €18,000 ($23,124) at the auction on 20 November.
The grey-blue exhibition pamphlet bears a striking Max Pechstein woodcut on its cover, and a further 10 original woodcuts by various artists inside.
Founded in Dresden in 1905, prominent members of Die Brucke included Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and the painter Fritz Bleyl.
The 1912 exhibition from which the pamphlet originates was one of the last that the existential Die Brücke (The Bridge) collective ever held.
Exhibition posters and programmes have performed well at auction previously. An extremely rare Edvard Munch lithograph (thought to be an untrimmed trial proof of the poster that was eventually printed in much larger numbers) sold for £46,850 ($74,726) at Christie's in March this year. View this superb historic poster we have currently in stock.
The two day auction grossed upwards of €1.5m ($2m), with the flea market discovery ranking fourth among the top sellers.
The auction's leading lot was Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied-Neuwied's Reise in das Innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834, which sold for €92,400 ($118,970).
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