Nice find. "A military antiques collector who paid £500 for a shoe box full of flag fragments was stunned to find it was used in the Battle of Waterloo more than 200 years ago. Gary Lawrence, 58, bought the item on an online auction and had 'no idea' the flag was so rare - and could be worth £300,000. He is now restoring the flag, which dates back to 1815 and belonged to the Coldstream Guards 15th Light Company, with a team from the V&A museum. Mr Lawrence, from Collier Row, east London, runs Waterloo Militaria with his son Luke, 28, and says he has never found anything this historically significant. Mr Lawrence paid £500 for the box of old flags and had no idea that it was from the Battle of Waterloo He thinks the 1815 flag is even more desirable than the only surviving flag from the Battle of Trafalgar, which sold for more than £300,000 in 2015. Mr Lawrence, who works as a window fitter, said: 'I bought it through an online auction in America in June. We deal a lot in Napoleonic items and had no idea what this would be. 'It was really fragile, it's a very early flag and was described as fragments so we had no idea how much of the flag there'd be. 'We laid it out on a board - it took three days to put together - and found it was a flag from Waterloo, of which there are virtually none in existence. 'It's more important because it's from the battle of Hougoumont, and barely any flags from that battle survived. 'The Coldstream Guards 15th Light Company were one of the most important regiments at Waterloo." Antiques collector paid £500 for a ragged Union Flag | Daily Mail Online
Hands up who thinks this chap might have had rather more of an inkling of what he was bidding on than this article suggests. £500 for a box of old flags is quite a bit on spec... Fair play to him! That goes right onto my list of 'national militaria that makes me come over a bit funny'. Trafalgar sail, Nelson's coat, Little Willie, any VC, etc. Damned fine.
