THE INTERNATIONAL appeal of chess helped push the price of a chess set which was sold in Perth this week to a staggering £11,200.

Expected to fetch between £2000 and £3000, five telephone bidders fought with people in the room at Lindsay Burns Auction House in King Street on Tuesday to send the price spiralling.

A finely carved 19th/20th century European boxwood chess set, the lot was eventually sold to a London telephone bidder.

“Chess is a universally acknowledged game and this was a very fine set in good condition,” said auctioneer Nick Burns.

Another lot to exceed its pre-sale estimate was a fine Italian 19th century micromosaic plaque of a wild boar being attacked by hounds. The plaque went for £7400 to a New York bidder, compared with an expected sum of £2000 to £3000.

A large narwhal tusk—pictured in The Courier last week—that had links to a Dundee family whose forebears had whaling ships also did well, going for £4200 to a London bidder.

The under-bidder who lost out in the contest was a woman who hoped to acquire it for her husband as they had seen narwhals in the Arctic.