Is your old Ikea furniture worth a small fortune?

Ikea is well-known for selling good-quality, affordable pieces of furniture, but some older pieces of Ikea furniture have started fetching as much as £50,000 at auction.

The fact that Ikea has produced several classics over the years is news to the art collecting world. But several Ikea designs are sold today at auction for prices that far exceed their original modest purchase price according to Barnebys, the leading art search engine that tracks art market trends.

Related: 13 incredibly interesting facts you didn’t know about Ikea

While these pieces of furniture - a few from the early 1940s - aren't the same as what we've come to know from Ikea over the years, they're now becoming incredibly sought-after, commanding prices much higher than when first launched. The most expensive Ikea furniture sold in auction is the furniture group ‘Åke’, which was manufactured between 1952 and 1956.

The list includes sofas and armchairs, and the so-called ‘Mushroom’ or ‘Clam’ chair has become one of the most sought-after items, climbing in value by thousands of pounds over the past few years. Some chairs have sold for a whopping £50,000.

Other designs that have rocketed in price include bookshelves by Gillis Lundgreen (£3,000), the Amiral steel and leather chairs by Karin Mobring (£875), and chairs by Eric Wörtz (£1,500).

If you have any of these retro items at home, you might want to head to the auction house NOW!

An example of this is the Vilbert chair by Panton, which was sold in 1993 for just £60 and was not a big success. Now the chairs fetch upwards of £700 at auction.

The 'Q56' red leather armchair has recently been sold for £875.

A ceramic terrine 'Nejlika' has sold for a staggering £1,180.

'Currently more and more people are watching Ikea's production from the 1970s to 1990s. When a new generation becomes financially established and begins to trade at an auction, they usually start to buy what they saw around them when growing up. We saw it clearly around the turn of the century when the Scandinavian design from the 1950s and 60s became incredibly popular, and now it's increasingly 1970s and 90s. Personally, I think Ikea's PS series will be in demand in the future. Thomas Sandell's agency from the 1990s with good and timely design is already a classic', says Barnebys co-founder, Pontus Silfverstolpe.

Related: 12 thoughts everyone has while walking around Ikea

Ironically the most expensive Ikea auction items today are almost always Ikea's flops, which were quickly discontinued due to lack of sales figures or expensive production costs.

So while it’s probably fine to throw out your Billy bookcase and your Poäng chair, make sure you keep hold of items from the PS series, and get any items you have from the 1970s to 1990s priced up. You could be sitting on a gold mine!

Do you have any of these Ikea furniture items in your home?