The 61 cm tall Buddha on a 20 cm tall stand sold for 130 times its high estimate when it was hammered for $650,000.
The auctioneer, Mr Martin Farrah, also appeared entranced given that the total for the piece including the 25 per cent buyers premium (which goes to the company) was $797,745.
The estimates of $4000 to $6000 did not include the premium.
The price continued to endorse Asian art as the new haven for sleepers in the saleroom. Usually the sleepers - like the buyers - are Chinese, but this Buddha was catalogued as Burmese.
Could this difference have had any bearing on the result?
"Perhaps the Buddha was earlier than we had thought," Mr Farrah said in his attempted explanation.
The vendor's joy must have been especially enhanced by the understanding that he had bought it for only $2800 at the same auction house five years ago.
But the vendor just might have been aware of the gathering interest in the lot as the auction approached.
Lawson's also only recently sold a Chinese day bed or, in popular parlance, either an opium bed or a love seat.
The hammer price then however was just under the lower estimate of $180,000. It sold for $170,000 plus 25 per cent premium of $212,500.
That was at a strange hybrid of a sale called a mixed vendor household contents auction.
Vendors and auctioneers and auctioneers have been brought brutally down to the ground on some occasions when Chinese antiques have sold for massive multiples of the estimated price and the buyer has reneged on the deals.
Sometimes they have bid to the heights to save face.
Mr Farrah said he had spoken to the buyer in Beijing after the sale and was satisfied that there had been no confusion and that that the piece would be paid for.
The Buddha was offered in one of Lawson's new monthly Asian art sales. If results like this continue then the sales will be rushed, if only as spectator events. It is a rare sleeper that excites viewers any more when European or Australian antiques are offered.
The room was full and it was one of those assembled who called out the opening bid of $100,000 which alone was 20 times the mid estimate. Room buyers, all seemingly from the local Chinese community or interstate or overseas visitors, participated in the bidding process until around the $400,000 mark after which the two top bidders were from the Internet.
Invaluable, the Internet company hosting the bidding, receives 3 per cent on top of the all up price, for the service.
The bronze and stand was of modest size but weighed a hefty 55 kg. The buyer must have felt he or she was also in Lotus land as it is also a land of indulgence and the price seemed to be heavy on that.
If it continues to grow in value at the same rate of the past few years it will soon be worth many millions.
But that would take it to La La land and over time a few objects have bounced between the two.
Where are the cataloguers? Lawson's are not alone in under-estimating the occasional Chinese antique.
