Crock of gold!

THE tea service which sold for £356 on eBay

Dr Kershaw’s Hospice has netted £3,000 in its first six months of online auctions.

The latest offering, a Noritake tea service, brought in £356 after it was snapped up by a collector in Japan.

The tea set was donated to one of Kershaw’s charity shops and spotted by eagle-eyed appeals manager Brian Hurst.

He took it to the Royton hospice for his colleagues to put on eBay.

Two bidders from Japan pushed the cost up to its sale price, and it is now on the way back to the country where it was made.

A Poole Pottery vase auctioned at the same time was bought by a UK-based collector for £160, and regular cash comes in from the sale of larger ink cartridges for laser printers.

They are donated by businesses and organisations which change their laser printers or photocopiers and have unused and unopened boxes of printer ink cartridges and toners left over.

A grandfather clock donated by a volunteer sparked the idea to sell items on eBay earlier this year.

It brought in £740, and paved the way for a new moneymaking venture which has boosted the amount of money made from donated items.