Up for sale at Bonhams scientific instrument and clock sale on December 13 was a rare tool for travellers in the Medieval world.
The tool, a brass quadrant, was estimated at £150,000 to £200,000 compared with the last one of its vintage had been estimated at £300,000 in 2005 and sold for the equivalent of $700,000 to the British Museum.
This time the auctioneer took the bidding from £80,000 to £140,000 just one less bid than the lower estimate and brought down the hammer.
He did so without saying that the quadrant was unsold, which tends to be Bonhams policy outside New York where it is mandatory by law.
There was no conspicuous bidding in the room and afterwards its failure to sell was confirmed.
The two quadrants, however, were different in several respects other than their assessed value, seeming insiders to this collecting field whispered to our correspondent, Terry Ingram, after the auction.
The latest quadrant up for grabs, perhaps best known as the Richard II quadrant dated 1396, was a basic horary quadrant for telling the time.
Most serious travellers would have needed one in those early days.
The one that had made the big money previously, the Chaucer astrolabe quadrant dated 1326, however, had more sophisticated features.
Those features mostly associated with an astrolabe of course.
These were features a traveller following a star, as well as knowing what time of night it was, would die for.
It had associated bells and whistles including a movable eagle which made it possible to know not just when Christmas was due, but Easter also.
Astrolabe also assist with horoscopes.
Despite heaps of press, it was probably also difficult to whip up real buyer interest in the younger quadrant because the previous quadrant had hogged all the attention.
The previous consignment also had a more exciting provenance. It had been found in excavations of a series of clay floors on the site of an old inn called the House of Agnes, just outside the city walls of Canterbury in Kent, UK, on the main road to London.
There it had lain there for over 600 years conceivably lost at the site by a merchant travelling to or from Canterbury, rather like Chaucer’s pilgrims.
The Richard II quadrant had spent 20 years in a garden shed in Queensland after being brought to Australia by the family of the present vendor. He had inherited it rather than found it on his antique rounds but it still therefore came most immediately from the trade.
Seemingly informed visitors who were in the room whispered to our correspondent, Terry Ingram, that the absence of the Medieval equivalent of an (iPhone) rosssapp like the eagle, was a major difference in the comparative result.
But the chance of a further purchase by a museum was also much diminished by the purchase of the first especially as it required a UK purchaser to pay 23 per cent VAT on top of the entire offering, hammer price and premium.
So the estimates were not as conservative as they appeared.
The first quadrant had been bought with the aid of a grant from the UK's National Heritage Fund.
Bonhams said after the auction a negotiated sale might be possible.
But its consignor, Christopher Becker, said this week that he had heard nothing along these lines and anticipated its return to Australia.
It just took two bidders to make or break a sale, he said.
The last astrolabe quadrant had also been sold before the global financial crisis and long term recovery still casts a pall over the market.
The association with Richard II, like that of the horary quadrant, may have also over excited all parties involved.
Some argue that the engraved stag lying down wearing a coronet around its throat was an emblem of the age rather than any indication of ownership or even court involvement.
Not that Bonhams made any such claim. The object was meticulously and fully catalogued. .
The company had a right to feel ebullient at the find especially as dealers and collectors can be easily carried away - almost unscientifically so in a way - about their subject field.
It was the second oldest time measuring piece to survive from the UK, the first being the Chaucer astrolabe quadrant described above.
One scientific instrument dealer, a Mannheim. Germany, clock dealer, had even bid $19 million for an early (18th century) mechanical calculator consigned from Australia to Christie's in the mid 1990s and could not pay for it.
Some of the viewers would have liked the "Australian" quadrant to have had finer engraving and perhaps a signature.
Returned to Australia and shown publicly it could obtain the significance as a part of Australia's patrimony it lacked before its export.
So the kiss of death - a very Plantaganet thing especially to its fops - in the saleroom could have benign consequences for our patrimony rather than the British.
It may not be as easy to export in future. With the romance of a garden shed find behind it an export licence may be required.
So even if the Wise Men did not show up this Christmas for its vendor in London, Santa may do so down the track for Australia.