Antiques Roadshow fans were left open-mouthed after a guest found out he’d wiped over £20,000 from his antiques’ value – quite literally.
An owner of two bronze statues spoke to expert Christian Beadman on the show, who had to break the news that he’d halved their value by simply being a “keen polisher”.
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The BBC show’s viewers saw the owner of the statues present the horse and bear antiques, explaining that they’d been in his family since the early 1900s.
They were originally owned by his great grandfather who worked at a cotton mill, and they’d been gifted to him after he set up a workers counsel.
Expert Christian was impressed with the statues, but couldn’t help but notice they were a bit shinier than usual.
He asked the owner: “They’re both quite shiny, are you a keen polisher?”, who admitted: “I was last weekend!”
Christian responded with a bit of a gut-wrenching blow: “It’s not necessarily a good thing to do with antique bronzes.”
He explained that this is due to polishing, as “it takes away the original pattern”, adding that this: “does sadly affect the value”.
This then brought him to the all-important question – how much were they worth?
The first statue up for valuation was the horse, which Christian said was “probably in the region at auction of £2,000 to £4,000”.
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However, he added that: “if it weren’t so highly polished you could have doubled those figures”.
Talking about the bear statue, Christian explained that although it was “again quite highly polished”, it was still worth a pretty penny.
He said: “I think again that that one is only £20,000 to £40,000”.
Despite the savage blow, knowing that his hard work polishing up the statues had devalued them, the owner still seemed pretty happy.
He told the expert: “Thank you very much indeed!”.
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