Could you be sitting on an Ikea ‘antique’ worth a fortune?

IT’S a brand more associated with meatballs and allen keys than investment opportunities and designer prices.

But an Ikea armchair bought for just £20 has sold at auction for more than £15,000 – setting a new world record for a piece made by the Swedish manufacturer.

The Cavelli armchair – one of five – was designed for Ikea in 1959.

While it has some way to go before it can be considered an antique – UK customs regulations say an item must have been made 100 years sale – Ikea items appear to be commanding similar of the £23 bold lacquered

metal armchair, Oti, designed in prices to vintage pieces.

1986, sold for £875 in 2016. The armchair sold for £15,500 Other auction houses in Sweden in Stockholm this month and is have also seen Ikea items just one of several items which being sold for huge prices. At have been auctioned over the Wright auction house, an Ake years at Bukowskis, a Swedish armchair, which cost just under auction house bought by the £16 in 1956, sold for as much as UK-owned Bonhams firm. £2,863 this April. And a pair of

An Impala armchair, designed £4.50 Skopa armchairs designed for Ikea to sell at £80 in 1972, in 1970 by Ole Gjerlov-Knudsen sold at the auction house for and Torben Lind went for £210 almost £2,000 in 2020. Two copies in 2016 at the same place. A £160

Skye recliner, which was designed for Ikea in the 1980s, sold for £770 in September 2020 at Stadsauktion Sundsvall. Ponbefore tus Silfverstolpe, Swedish antiques expert and founder of auction search site Barnebys, said: ‘The flat package fortune continues to surprise the auction world, but we have more peaks to look forward to. It is especially designer furniture from the ’50s and ’80s from Ikea that costs more and more on the second-hand market. Some of these famous Ikea designs by leading artists can be considered collector’s items.

‘It would not surprise me if in time some of this furniture ends up in one of the world’s major design museums.’

‘Considered collector’s items’