7 Priceless Ancient Bronze Vessels From China (One Sold for $37.2 Million)

It resembles a decorative garden urn, a heavy bronze vessel, dark green with age, sitting in the corner of a room for generations. One vessel from this exact category, cast over 3,000 years ago, sold at Christie's in New York for $37,200,000, the highest price ever paid for a piece of Chinese archaic bronze. Sounds crazy, right? It's true. Today we're counting down 7 types of ancient Chinese bronze ritual vessels, a category almost nobody outside serious collecting circles has heard of, worth more than almost anything else on this channel. And stick around, because the very last item on this list is the single most expensive bronze vessel ever sold. Before we start, one honesty note that applies to this entire video. Unlike most categories on this channel, there isn't really a modest, everyday version of a genuine piece like this. What exists is either an inexpensive decorative reproduction, made any time in the last century purely for home decor, worth a few hundred dollars at most, or a genuinely ancient piece, thousands of years old, worth an amount that starts in the hundreds of thousands and climbs from there. There's very little middle ground, and that gap is exactly what makes this category so fascinating. Let's start at number seven. Number seven, the ding. The three- or four-legged bronze vessel, originally used to cook and serve meat offerings during ritual ceremonies, considered in ancient China to be the ultimate symbol of political legitimacy and royal authority. Owning the right number of ding vessels was, quite literally, a sign of how much power a noble family held. A decorative modern reproduction, cast purely for display, sells for $100 to $800. A genuine ancient ding, even a smaller or less historically significant example, routinely sells for $80,000 and up at major auction houses. A pair of inscribed late Shang Dynasty ding vessels, remarkable because surviving pairs are extremely uncommon, sold at Christie's for $1,890,000. Number 6. The Gai. The round bowl-shaped bronze vessel used to hold offerings of grain during the same ceremonies as the ding, often resting on a separate stand or set of small feet. Most people who've never studied ancient Chinese bronzes have no way to distinguish this shape from purely decorative modern bronze bowls sold in home decor stores. Reproductions in this shape sell for $100 to $600. A genuine Western Zhou dynasty guy, correctly identified and in good condition, has sold for several hundred thousand dollars. One particularly significant example, called the Yi Yu Gui, tied to a documented historical event from around 980 BCE, sold at Sotheby's New York for $1,080,000. Number five, the hook. The tall, rounded bronze jar with a narrower neck, originally used to hold wine for ritual ceremonies, often the most elegantly proportioned shape among all the archaic bronze vessel types. Inscriptions inside the neck when they survive are what separate an important piece from merely an old one. A decorative reproduction sells for $150 to $700. One genuine example, called the Guoji Shi Zizu Hu, carried a 17-character inscription inside its neck dedicating the vessel to future generations of a specific family. Bidding for it at Sotheby's New York started at $420,000 and climbed for more than 15 minutes before it sold for $2,100,000. Go ahead and subscribe now. I go through a new region and a new tradition every week, and this is one of the deepest, oldest collecting categories in the entire world. Number 4. The Zun. The wide-mouthed bronze wine vessel, sometimes plain and cylindrical, sometimes cast in the shape of an animal, used specifically for pouring ritual libations. The animal-shaped versions, in particular, are considered among the rarest and most prized forms in all of Chinese archaic bronze. A decorative, zun-shaped reproduction sells for $200 to $900. A genuine Shang Dynasty zun, plainly cast without figural decoration, has sold for $1,455,000 at Sotheby's New York, roughly double its pre-sale estimate. Number three, the pan. The wide, shallow basin, used for ceremonial hand-washing before ritual offerings, often overlooked by casual observers because its simple, functional shape looks less dramatic than a tall vessel or an animal figure. That simplicity is deceptive. A decorative reproduction basin sells for $100 to $500. dollars. One genuine example, a Western Zhou dynasty piece dated to 823 BCE, known as the Xi Japan, sold in mainland China for a price equivalent to roughly 21 million dollars, making it one of the most valuable pieces of Chinese bronze ever sold anywhere in the world. Number two, the gong. The vessel cast in the shape of an animal, most dramatically a recumbent ram or a mythical composite creature, considered the rarest and most technically demanding category of all archaic Chinese bronzes to produce. Because of the sculptural skill required, far fewer of these survive compared to the simpler geometric vessel shapes. Decorative animal-shaped reproductions sell for $200 to $1,200. One genuine late Shang Dynasty Gong, cast in the shape of a recumbent ram and measuring just under 9 inches long, came from the historic Fujita Museum collection sale in Japan and sold at Christie's for just over $27 million. One left, and it's the biggest number on this entire list. Number one, the Fang Lei and Fang Zun, the largest and most monumental of all archaic bronze vessel shapes, square-bodied wine jars and containers that represent the absolute pinnacle of ancient Chinese bronze casting technology. These are genuinely rare even by the standards of a category where everything is rare. Here's the full story behind the number that opened this video. In March of 2001, a massive bronze vessel called the Min Fang Lei came up for sale at Christie's in New York. Christie's called it one of the most important Chinese archaic bronzes ever to appear at auction. It sold for nine million dollars, a world record for any Asian artwork at the time, and remained the record for archaic Chinese bronze specifically for years afterward. It was reportedly bought by an Italian collector. The record didn't stop there. In 2017, the Fujita Museum in Japan sold its extraordinary collection of archaic bronzes, and two pieces from that single sale rewrote the record books entirely. A fang lei from the late Shang Dynasty sold for $33,847,500, and a fang zun from the same era and the same sale sold for $37,207,500, the number that opened this video, and still the record for any piece of archaic Chinese bronze ever sold at auction. It's worth understanding how pieces like these ended up in the West at all. In the early 1900s, a Detroit industrialist named Charles Lang Freer began assembling one of the greatest collections of Chinese bronzes