Tycoon buys nose of Concorde for £100,000 (now he has to tell his wife)

Nose for a deal: the cone at Andrew Lamberty's antiques store in Pimlico
12 April 2012

It is the most distinctive part of the most famous passenger plane in history.

Now this nose cone from a British Airways Concorde has found a new home and purpose - as a decoration on the wall of a London property magnate's house.

The private collector bought the "droop" nose - lowered during take-off and landing to give pilots a better view - for almost £100,000. But he is yet to tell his wife.

It also means one antique dealer has made a sky-high profit. The artefact was sold by Andrew Lamberty, 41, who picked it up for £55,000 from the curator of the British Airways museum, Paul Jarvis.

Mr Jarvis had taken it onto Channel 4 show Four Rooms to raise funds.

Pimlico-based Mr Lamberty was quickly able to sell it on to the property businessman, one of his regular customers, who wanted to remain anonymous.

"It's definitely going to retain its value. It's a very, very rare thing. It's a great piece of British history," said Mr Lamberty. "It looks super-cool - it's a real piece of James Bond-style finishing."

One of four experts on the show who compete to secure deals on items brought in by sellers, he recalled that the same Concorde nose cone had once been valued at £320,000 shortly after the supersonic jet was retired in 2003.

Mr Lamberty said the buyer "called me straight away after the show and came to see me the next day. We settled on a reasonable price".

He believes the nose cone, one of two spares that BA had owned, would be the last to come to market: "It's a very nice object in itself. Often when things are designed to go at high speed, they're often very beautiful too.

"The record flight [from New York to London] was 2 hours 52 minutes. My friend travelled on it but I'm sad I never did. You needed a girlfriend in British Airways to be able to afford it."

BA had eight Concordes and one is on displayed at its museum at Heathrow.

The first entered commercial service in 1976 with a flight from London to Bahrain. Cruising at 1,350mph, it typically took three hours 20 minutes to fly from London to New York, and less on the way back.

Flights were halted after one of the jets crashed in Paris in 2000, killing 113 people. Services were resumed until the last commercial flight on October 24, 2003.

The latest edition of Four Rooms is on Channel 4 tonight at 8pm.

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