The desk where Charles Dickens wrote “Great Expectations” and his final correspondence hours before his death fetched 433,250 pounds ($850,000) at auction on Wednesday, around seven times its pre-sale estimate.

The Irish entrepreneur who bought the furniture called the price “a bargain” for such a piece of literary history.

“It’s a part of Charles Dickens, so I’m delighted to be its owner,” Tom Higgins told Reuters by telephone after the sale. “I’ve been a huge Dickens fan for a long time. I actually think it’s worth a lot more than what I paid for it and expected it could have gone for as much as five million (pounds). I think it’s a bargain, really,” added Higgins, 49, who plans to be Ireland’s first space tourist.

Proceeds from the sale were going to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London made it easier to part with the cash.

Christie’s sold the furniture as part of its valuable books and manuscripts sale in London, and the price includes the buyer’s premium.

The writing desk and chair from the study of Dickens’ Gad’s Hill residence near Rochester, Kent, was passed on by descent to Christopher Charles Dickens and his wife Jeanne-Marie Dickens.

She then donated them to Great Ormond Street, with which Dickens had a close association.

According to Christie’s, Dickens wrote “Great Expectations” and a number of other late novels and short stories at the mahogany writing desk.

The 1945 painting ‘Troubadour’ by Rufino Tamayo, is the highest selling piece of Latin American art. The piece sold for $7.2 million beating out Frida Kahlo’s “Roots,” which sold in May 2006 for $5.6 million.

“The 1945 painting, which depicts a musician strumming his guitar as two women watch, was acquired by an anonymous buyer“, Christie’s spokeswoman Sung-Hee Park said.

Some people may be familiar with Tamayo from an episode of Antiques Roadshow” in a “Missing Masterpieces” segment in May 2005.

“Tres Personajes, second version,” was sold in 1977 at a sale of modern pictures in Sotheby’s. In the fall of 1987, after its owners had placed the painting for safekeeping in an art storage warehouse, it was discovered that “Tres Personajes, second version,” along with several other pieces, was missing.

“Tres Personajes” was found among trash on a Manhattan street in 2003. Elizabeth Gibson, the woman who found the canvas, credited an ANTIQUES ROADSHOW FYI “Missing Masterpieces” segment about the painting for providing confirmation of her amazing find. On Nov. 20, 2007, “Tres Personajes” was sold to an undisclosed collector for $1.049 million in a Sotheby’s auction of Latin American art.“

For more information on the auction as well as the painting, you can check out Christie’s auction page.