A charity shop has made almost £10,000 after finding a mint condition Cartier watch in a bag of donations.
The British Heart Foundation sold the sought-after timepiece on eBay for £9,766 after it was discovered in the bag in the shop at Hounslow, London.
The Cartier Tank Francaise 18ct gold watch was sent to the BHF online hub in Leeds for verification before its online selling partner Shopiago helped it fetch BHF’s record internet price on 3 December.
Cartier watches are loved by celebrities including Jake Gyllenhall, Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama. Obama travelled the world with her own Cartier Tank Francaise.
Kama Villiers, enterprise customer success manager at Shopiago, said: “When you consider the average value of an item donated to a charity shop is less than five pounds, finding a Cartier watch is like striking gold and winning the lottery at the same time.
“Whoever the generous donor was, they can rest assured that their donation will go a long way towards fighting heart disease.
“The team at the BHF did an excellent job identifying, valuing, listing and selling the watch, and it’s been simply brilliant to see so much money being raised for such an important cause.”
Richard Pallier, head of online retail at the BHF, said: “As the largest charity in the UK funding research into heart and circulatory disease, every donation makes a huge difference.
“It’s only through the hugely generous donations of the public that we can continue to do this very important work.”
Other donations sold online by the BHF in recent years have included a 7” vinyl demo of the Beatles’ Love Me Do (complete with a misspelling of Paul McCartney’s name), which sold for £9,400, and a second-hand Mercedes Benz E320, which sold for £7,502.