It’s the show where a guy in dowdy track pants says he found an old oil painting in a skip (dumpster) and hands it to a professional valuer. The valuer inspects the work and tells him that it’s from the 1700s and painted by an artist who was the best of his time and at the peak of his career. The art is thought to be a lost work and is worth around 85,000 pounds.
Not all pieces presented at the Roadshow end with a happy ending. Some are worth just a few pounds.
Someone drops a taxidermied horse’s leg onto the valuer’s table. It’s not particularly old or able to be used for anything practical. It’s creepy but not weird enough to become horror art (whatever that is). The story of why a single leg was preserved is unknown. The item is interesting but worth nothing.
The line behind the leg’s owner is long and the next person has a World War 2 medical stretcher. The person behind him has a bird cage and the next is clutching a quilt. Each believes that they have something of value.
But I imagine none of the items we see in wide shots, are of any value, and what goes on inside the minds of the evaluators is quite different to those who bear stretchers, quilts and one horse leg.
Here’s what I imagine they think:
“Not antique. Junk, sir.”
“You kept that all these years?”
“Don’t bother putting that on the table.”
“The skip bin is that way, ma’am.”
Ah, yes, what happens when it turns out the item is less than cost of a train ticket? Do they get carried home or are they left somewhere at the site?
Once people find out that their prized eight-foot distressed pine wardrobe (that took four men and a truck to get to the show) is only worth a hundred pounds, it doesn’t seem logical to haul it back home and store it in a shed where it won’t be seen or used again.
I imagine the site would end up littered with all kinds of things like these, especially smaller items. Assorted vases, glass sculptures, broken chairs, rusty wheelbarrows and other junk, would be easier left than taken. An on-site skip bin would be a godsend.
Surely it would overflow by the end of the day.
Who wants a brass bloodletting scarifier anyway? Yes, it’s old and an interesting medical retrospective, but no one needs one. It’s worthless. Chuck it in the bin buddy.
A replica 18th-century Grandfather clock with a cheap movement that doesn’t work? Sure, into the skip.
Clunky plastic amber-coloured acrylic jewellery from the 60’s? Skip is that way, ma’am.
Model square-rigger ship, circa 1892, made out of tobacco boxes? The skip is over there, sir.
Eighteenth-century shoe buckle? You know where.
Electro-plated goblet? Skip.
No hallmarks on your silver item? White metal goes into the skip.
A diorama of some old bridge that was built in 1932? Skippety-doo-dah!
I reckon 98% of the items presented to the Antiques Roadshow end up in landfill or go straight into the skip. That’s about when someone else finds it in that skip and thinks they can make a buck.
This brings me to Bargain Hunt…
-Michael
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.