Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency:  Newsflash

A mobile phone number that ends with five ‘eights’ – regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture – has sold at auction for an eye-watering 250,000 GBP.

The unusual sale took place at a court-organised online auction and had a starting price of 2,000 CNY (218 GBP) on the Taobao e-commerce platform.

However, the ‘lucky’ telephone number would go on to sell for 2.25 million CNY (245,375 GBP).

The number, which begins with 1890 and ends with five ‘eights’, long regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture, was issued by China Telecom, one of the country’s largest telecom operators.

According to the news source China Daily, a total of 589 people took part in the auction and 5,051 bids were made.

The online event, which was organised by the Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing, was watched by nearly 70,000 netizens.

The auction started at 10am on Saturday 15th August and was estimated to end 24 hours later, however people continued making bids and the event finished at 11.23am on the Sunday.

The ‘lucky’ phone number sold for a staggering 2.25 million CNY (245,375 GBP).

The bidding passed 1 million CNY (109,195 GBP) at 3.17pm on Saturday just five hours after the auction started.

It broke the 2 million CNY (218,402 GBP) mark at 9.13am on the Sunday.

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