BBC Antiques Roadshow guest speechless as £1 vase bought at boot sale makes staggering value
Antiques Roadshow's Eric Knowles was left gobsmacked when a glass vase, purchased for a mere £1 at a car boot sale, was valued at an astonishing amount.
A woman from Ayrshire, who wished to remain anonymous, brought the vase to the BBC show for evaluation, not anticipating the staggering valuation she would receive.
The vase was identified as a 1929 piece by famed French designer René Lalique, after being scrutinised by experts at Dumfries House near Cumnock, and was valued at a minimum of £25,000. The five-inch-tall glass vase was crafted using an ancient technique known as cire perdue.
This complex method involves creating a wax model that is encased in plaster, then melted away and replaced with molten glass, with the plaster mould being broken away once the glass cools to reveal the final creation. The market value for Lalique pieces has seen a significant increase in recent years.
Antiques Roadshow expert Eric Knowles shared his excitement with the Irvine Herald: "It's wonderful to find treasures like this beautiful vase during the programme's filming," reports the Express.
(Image: BBC)
He continued: "It certainly gives us all a buzz and we thoroughly enjoy meeting people everywhere we go. I've been waiting over 25 years for such a piece to come in, and this was the stuff of dreams. They'd dumped it in the attic after the plant in it died and were about to throw it away. We had a lot of clouds in Dumfries, but this was the cloud with a silver lining. It's worth at least £25,000."
The vase ultimately fetched a whopping £32,450 at auction, exceeding its previous valuation by £7,000.
This follows a rerun of the beloved BBC programme, which aired on Sunday, June 8. Viewers were transported to Brodie Castle in Scotland, where a parade of treasures awaited appraisal.
Among them was a man who wowed Richard with a 1960s Rolex GMT-Master, inherited from his uncle.
Richard, peering intently at the watch, informed the owner: "All Rolex collectors refer to these things by their reference number," and "You know as well as I do, because it says so on the dial, that it's a GMT-Master."
(Image: BBC)
Richard explained: "It's the reference 1675, which is the classic GMT-Master. When you said 60s, I think we could fairly safely say 1960 to 1961, so that all fits in."
Upon closer inspection, Richard was thrilled to find the watch unaltered, noting that many watches are often modified during servicing, much to collectors' dismay.
He said: "They would've changed the bezel and they would've changed the dial with an upgrade," before adding:"You would've had it back thinking, 'Oh, it looks like new'. Collectors hate that, it's absolutely original, spot-on."
The expert told the owner: "It's a Rolex product, of course, but it says 'Made in the USA'. So perhaps he specified that he did not want the oyster bracelet; he wanted a jubilee bracelet, and they put this one on for him.
"Which sort of detracts from it a little bit, probably detracts from it by a couple of thousand pounds." However, Richard had some good news as well, revealing that the watch is worth "£12,000 to £15,000."
You can catch Antiques Roadshow every Sunday at 8pm on BBC1.
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