A glass electric insulator, bought for a few dollars at a garage sale, has sold for $10,313 on the eBay trading website.
Jeanie Quimby and Phil Unrine, from Oregon in the USA, paid $5 for both the glass insulator and a ceramic insulator. Quimby had recently been shown how to sell on eBay and advertised the glass insulator with a starting price of $5.99.
She returned to her computer later that day to discover 10 urgent messages from collectors, who told her that the item dated back to the 1890s and was extremely rare. Glass insulators were first used in the mid-1850s on top of telegraph, telephone and power poles and few are said to have survived.
The winning bid came in the last few seconds of the auction, topping a bid of $10,213. Quimby also sold the ceramic insulator on
