These Antiques Roadshow finds made their owners crazy rich. Would you sell your piece or keep it for the sentimental value?
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00:00It's the kind of thing everyone has dreamed about.
00:03You're digging around in grandma's attic when you stumble across an old knick-knack that's
00:06actually worth a pant load of greenbacks.
00:09Sometimes, though, the fantasy becomes reality.
00:11Here are some antiques roadshow finds that made owners crazy rich.
00:15Collected by the owner's father in the 1930s and 40s on two visits to China, this collection
00:21included four pieces from the 18th century.
00:24The owner was hoping for a nice valuation, but even she was stunned when appraiser Jim
00:28Callahan delivered the verdict.
00:30A total amount of between $710,000 to $1,070,000.
00:38Damn.
00:40Many people keep artwork on their walls behind their doors.
00:43It's a pretty normal thing.
00:44It might be a Reservoir Dogs poster if you're a single man, or a framed picture that says
00:48life is just a chair of bullies if you're a grandma.
00:51What most people don't hang behind their doors are million-dollar lost paintings by the great
00:55Latin American artists of the 20th century.
00:58But this owner, from a 2012 visit to Corpus Christi, isn't most people.
01:02His great-grandparents bought a painting in Mexico in 1930, and subsequently hung it in
01:06their house behind a door.
01:08What they didn't know was that this was actually an early painting by a teenage Diego Rivera
01:13from 1904, who would go on to be one of the most prominent painters in Mexican history,
01:17famous both for his murals and also for being married to Frida Kahlo.
01:21Needless to say, he was pretty surprised to learn just what he had.
01:25I would be putting a retail estimate on the piece of between $800,000 and a million dollars.
01:32Seriously?
01:34Every baseball card collector dreams of finding the ultimate score, but nobody will ever be
01:39able to beat the lucky owner who brought her family's collection to the show in 2014.
01:44In 1871, her great-great-grandmother had hosted Boston's first professional baseball team,
01:49the Red Stockings.
01:50As a gift, they gave her a complete set of team baseball cards, along with a signed letter
01:55from the team.
01:56Appraiser Leila Dunbar was so blown away by the collection, which was unlike any previously
02:00known to exist, that she got choked up delivering the verdict.
02:04I would insure it for at least $1 million.
02:08It is the greatest archive I have ever had at the roadshow.
02:13Perhaps needless to say, military artifacts and memorabilia are a very popular category
02:18of antique on both the U.S. and U.K. versions of Antiques Roadshow.
02:22As a result, it should come as no surprise that the highest-ticket item in the history
02:26of the U.K. show, bringing in at £1 million, or just over $1.3 million, is a military item.
02:33Well, sort of.
02:34Actually, it's a delicate flower, created by legendary jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé.
02:39The flower was gifted to an army regiment in the early 1900s by Georgina, Countless
02:43of Dudley, in honor of their service in South Africa.
02:46In my opinion, this is worth a million pounds.
02:50Really?
02:51Wow.
02:52Goodness gracious.
02:54Let's be super clear about one thing just right up top.
02:58Absolutely, do not, under any circumstances, buy anything made from rhino horns, ever,
03:04for any reason.
03:05Rhinos are endangered, and the chief reason is people hunting them for their horns.
03:09Rhino horns.
03:10Just say no.
03:11That said, one man in Tulsa discovered his collection of rhino horn cups was worth a
03:15fortune back in 2011.
03:16He began collecting them in the 70s, spending a total of about $5,000 for several Chinese
03:21libation cups from the 17th and 18th centuries.
03:25So he was pretty shocked to hear just how much they had increased in value.
03:28A conservative number would be between a million and a million five hundred thousand dollars
03:32for this group.
03:34Serious?
03:35PBS later gave an update indicating that after the appraisal, Chinese officials began cracking
03:39down on the trade of anything made with rhino horns.
03:42As a result, the market tanked, even for ancient art objects like these.
03:46When sent to auction, three of the five cups failed to sell at all, while the other two
03:50fetched the low end of their estimated range, which was still good for $300,000.
03:55China has since reversed their position, though, so who knows what value fluctuations are yet
03:58to come.
04:00Though most people these days just use their phone to tell time, there's still a big demand
04:04for well-made watches.
04:05In 2004, a man visited the roadshow with a Patek Philippe watch handed down to him from
04:10his great-grandfather that had cool features like a calendar that accounted for leap years
04:14and a moon phase indicator.
04:16Appraiser Paul Hartquist basically lost his mind.
04:19But in the way you'd expect a person to lose his mind on PBS, very calmly intoning that
04:23it was the finest watch he had ever seen.
04:26This watch at auction, I suspect, would bring close to a quarter million dollars.
04:32No!
04:33However, it was later discovered that this watch was literally one-of-a-kind, as the
04:38special features were made just for this singular example.
04:41That drove the price up dramatically, and in 2016 it brought $1.5 million at auction.