An Antiques Roadshow guest was stunned when he discovered the true value of a rare family heirloom that once belonged to royalty.
The lucky owner appeared on an episode of the popular British daytime television show that aired in March and saw the hunt for valuable personal items reach as far as Dorset.
Expert Geoffrey Munn met the guest, who revealed a “dazzling” and rare brooch dating from sometime between the 1820s and 1840s that came to him after Empress Eugénie gifted it to her family.
The antiques professional began by joking: “So the first thing to identify a great piece of jewelry is if you want to grab it and, in fact, I want to grab it right now and I’m going to show it to you in the sunlight, look at it shine.”
When asked to explain where the beautiful piece of jewelry came from, the owner admitted: “I don’t know much about it except that it was passed down through my grandfather’s paternal side.”
An Antiques Roadshow guest was stunned when he discovered the true value of a rare family heirloom that once belonged to royalty.
Expert Geoffrey Munn met with the guest, who revealed a “dazzling” and rare brooch dating from sometime between the 1820s and 1840s.
When it came time to do the math, the guest (RIGHT) was speechless at the offer the antiques expert made him.
‘I don’t even remember if she was my great-grandmother or my great-great-grandmother and it was given to her by Empress Eugénie.’
For those at home unaware, Geoffrey added: ‘The Empress Eugénie was the beautiful Spanish wife of Emperor Napoleon III of France and in some ways is something of a parallel to our own Queen Victoria.
‘This is a dazzling diamond brooch set in silver with a gold background. The stones were probably cut before the 1840s, so I would like to indicate the date of manufacture: 1820-1840.’
He continued: “And they probably came from something else, and that’s a pattern in jewelry, where pieces break off and reshape themselves. What kind of bird is this?”
Surprised, the owner assumed the rare object was an eagle, but the expert was not so sure.
“It could be an eagle, but there’s a little bit of a hesitant detail here that suggests to me it’s something much more exciting than just an eagle,” he revealed.
She adds: “It could be a Ho Ho bird, which comes from an Eastern tradition in which these birds represented change and were popular as wedding gifts. Each gemstone has a very specific meaning.”
‘The diamond is the hardest material known to man and that is why it is there for constant love and the ruby is sacred to Venus and here we have one as tiny as the eye.
The surprised owner assumed the strange object was an eagle, but the expert was not so sure.
Geoffrey said: In order to take it from you honourably, I’d probably need to give you something like £20,000 for it today.
‘But it is associated with Venus anyway, which supports my suggestion that it is a wedding brooch.
‘Even though the fashion of wearing diamond jewelry is not as good as it used to be, I still think it is a very valuable item and once again I want to snatch it from you.’
When it came time to do the math, the guest was speechless at the offer the antiques expert had made him.
Geoffrey said: ‘In order to take it from you honourably I’d probably need to give you something like £20,000 for it today.’
The owner, astonished, replied: “Twenty? Wow, I knew it was worth a lot, I didn’t think it was worth that much.”
This comes just after a guest on the US version of the show was stunned to learn that her $4.99 vase from Goodwill was actually worth up to $100,000.
The 1920 yellow Overbeck vase was featured on an episode of Antiques Roadshow earlier this week when an unidentified guest brought it to an event in Indiana.
The owner of the piece told appraiser David Rago that he and his wife were shopping at Goodwill when he saw the “beautiful” item on a shelf.
When told it could fetch between $50,000 and $100,000 at auction, the man replied: “My heart is beating fast!”
The buyer added: “I knew it was good quality, but I didn’t know anything about it, so I picked it up and looked at it,” the owner of the vase said.
Antiques Roadshow airs on BBC One on Sunday nights at 7pm