Antiques dealer who bought African mask for £130 then sold it for £3.6million WINS legal battle with previous owners after judge rules the elderly French couple failed to appreciate its true worth

An antiques dealer who bought an African mask for £130 and then sold it for £3.6 million has won a legal battle with its previous owners – after a judge ruled the elderly French couple failed to appreciate its true value.

The couple, in their 80s, sold the wooden mask in September 2021 as part of a number of antiques, including African artefacts they had kept at their second home in southern France and wanted to get rid of.

The items belonged to an ancestor who was a governor in Africa, and were thought to be of little value.

In addition to the mask, there were also lances, a circumcision knife, bellows and musical instruments.

They let the mask go for 150 euros (£130), but in March 2022 it was sold at auction in the southern city of Montpellier to an unknown buyer for 4.2 million euros (£3.6 million).

Fang masks, highly stylized and carved from wood, were made by the Fang people who occupied regions in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon

The couple, aged 81 and 88, from Nîmes in France, were cleaning up their house in 2021 and decided to sell the 'Ngil' mask

The auctioneers describe it as “an extremely rare 19th-century mask, owned by a secret society of the Fang people of Gabon,” an ethnic Bantu group, of which only about ten such objects still exist.

The couple immediately filed an order to cancel the original sale, claiming there had been an “authentication error.” They also said the purchaser of the mask was “informed of the actual value of the mask” at the time of the purchase.

But the court denied the request, saying the couple had made no attempt to have the mask appraised before selling it.

Their claim was characterized by “inexcusable negligence and frivolity,” the court said, ruling that they were not owed any money.

The Court also ruled that the antiquarian, who was not himself an expert in the field of African art, had not deceived them.

The dealer actually offered to pay them 300,000 euros (about $330,000), the starting price of the auction, but the couple's children refused, preferring to take the matter to court.

The couple's lawyer, Frederic Mansat-Jaffre, said after the ruling that his clients were “stunned” by the decision and were considering an appeal.

The court also rejected a separate request from the Gabon government to cancel the sale and return the mask.