Garston Stables Antique and Objects d'Art co-owner Tony Sparks recalls meeting two "very dodgy characters" for dinner in a palatial house overlooking a crusader castle in Izmir, the third largest Turkish city on the Aegean coast.
"One was French and had half his larynx removed, but he was still chain-smoking," Mr Sparks told the Queenstown Times in the safety of his Earl St shop.
"There was a constant stream of people in the house collecting envelopes then disappearing into the night.
"They told me I could buy tomb gas for a million US. There are more Roman ruins in Turkey than in Italy and Greece and you're purchasing an unopened tomb that could be 3000 years old. It could have some beautiful things in it.
"But I doubt they would have sold a tomb that they didn't know what was inside. I wouldn't buy an unopened tomb in any circumstances.
"The appeal of these shady characters is they're fun but you have to be very careful."
Mr Sparks makes trips to Turkey, Eastern Europe, Mumbai and Rajasthan every year in search of exotic items for his main shop, beside Garston Hotel on State Highway 6, and his temporary store in Queenstown.
"I'm looking for anything unusual. I buy what I like and if I don't sell it, I have the pleasure of keeping it. You're guided by your own taste.
"Budapest is great. These Eastern European cities are being flashed up by Western money, but you only have to go one block from the boulevards and it's pretty grim, with bullet holes in the walls.
"The history of Budapest is tragic. They reckon there's a ghost in every courtyard because they never had time to bury the bodies."
His network of regular international contacts has led him to a netherworld of the weird and the wonderful.
However, 80% of his customers are Wakatipu residents who are in the market for large pieces of furniture and unique items to decorate their homes. Doors and mirrors are particularly popular.
Mr Sparks sold a huge 300- to 400-year-old ironbound Rajasthani castle door to a Southern Lakes resident for his new home about two weeks ago. The door was shipped in eight pieces and "it was as much as I could do to lift one piece on my own", he said.
Mr Sparks' items range from popular $2 ceramic knobs for drawers and cupboards to a $10,000 museum-quality lady's handmade rosewood writing desk. He is selling wooden model ships on behalf of a Queenstown collector and had just acquired four tall, fluted, handblown candle stands from Firozabad when the Queenstown Times visited.
"Queenstown people recognise value and quality. They're well travelled and try to haggle, but they don't get very far with me," he said, joking.
Mr Sparks, an Englishman by birth but a New Zealander from the age of 9, was previously involved in several Queenstown businesses, including Alberts nightclub, Jackson Bay clothes retail, the Mountaineer and the former Hotel Wakatipu.
