Set of 14-point deer antlers – £11,500 at Martel Maides.
The reason for the stand-out price in St Peter Port on April 1?
These are probably the antlers of a Schomburgk’s deer, a species once native to Thailand named by the zoologist Edward Blyth in 1863 after the British consul in Bangkok, Sir Robert Schomburgk.
Magnificent males with basket-like antlers of up to 33 points were recorded although by the 1930s numbers had dwindled due to hunting and loss of habitat.
Now thought to be extinct, only one fully mounted specimen of Schomburgk’s deer is known, currently residing in the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris.
