Antiques Roadshow guest astounded by true value of rare royal family heirloom

An Antiques Roadshow guest was floored 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 TV show which aired in March and saw the quest for valuable personal items make its way to Dorset.

Expert Geoffrey Munn met with the guest, who revealed a ‘ravishing’ and rare brooch that dates back to sometime between the 1820s and 1840s and was passed down to him after being gifted to his family by Empress Eugenie.

The antiques pro began by joking: ‘So the first thing to identify a great piece of jewellery is whether you want to snatch it and actually I do – I’m going to snatch it right now and show you it in the sunlight, look at it blazing away.’

When asked to explain where the beautiful piece of jewellery came from, the owner admitted: ‘I don’t know that much about it other than it passed down through my paternal grandfather’s side. 

Expert Geoffrey Munn met with the guest, who revealed a ‘ravishing’ and rare brooch that dates back to sometime between the 1820s and 1840s

When it came down to crunching the numbers, the guest (RIGHT) was left speechless at the offer made by the antiques expert

‘I can’t remember even whether she was my great-grandmother or my great-great-grandmother and it was given to her by the Empress Eugenie.’

For those at home who don’t know, Geoffrey added: ‘Empress Eugenie, she was the very beautiful Spanish wife of Emperor Napoleon III of France and in a sense, she’s sort of a parallel to our own Queen Victoria.

‘This is a ravishing diamond brooch set in silver, backed in gold. The stones have probably been cut before the 1840s which I’d like to give as a date for this, 1820-1840.’

He continued: ‘And they probably came from something else- and that’s a pattern in jewellery that bits are broken down and remodelled. What type of bird is this?’

Looking shocked, the owner guessed that the rare item was supposed to be an eagle – but the expert wasn’t so sure.

‘It might be an eagle but there’s a tiny little hesitant detail here that suggests to me it’s something much more exciting than just an eagle,’ he revealed.

Adding: ‘It might be a Ho Ho bird which comes from an oriental tradition where these birds represented change and they were popular as wedding gifts. Every single precious stone has a very specific meaning’

‘The diamond is the hardest material known to man and is therefore there for constant love and the ruby is sacred to Venus and here we have a tiny one as the eye. 

Looking shocked, the owner guessed that the rare item was supposed to be an eagle – but the expert wasn’t so sure

Geoffrey said: In order to snatch it honourably from you I probably need to give you something like £20,000 for it today’

‘But nonetheless, it is associated with Venus which backs up my suggestion that this is a marriage brooch.

‘Despite the fact that fashion for wearing diamond jewellery isn’t as great as it was, I still think it is a very valuable object and once again, I want to snatch it from you.’

When it came down to crunching the numbers, the guest was left speechless at the offer made by the antiques expert. 

Geoffrey said: In order to snatch it honourably from you I probably need to give you something like £20,000 for it today.’

Astounded, the owner replied: ‘Twenty? Wow, I knew it was worth quite a lot, didn’t think it was worth quite that much.’

It comes just after one guest on the American version of the show was stunned to learn his $4.99 vase from Goodwill was actually worth up to $100,000.

The 1920 Overbeck yellow vase featured on an Antiques Roadshow episode 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 spotted the ‘beautiful’ product on a shelf.

When told it could fetch between $50,000 and $100,000 at auction, the man replied: ‘My heart is thumping!’

The shopper added: ‘I knew it was good quality, but I knew nothing about it, so I picked it up and looked,’ said the owner of the vase.

Antiques Roadshow airs on BBC One on Sunday nights at 7pm.