Antiques Roadshow guest speechless as expert shares 'bad news' on beloved items
An Antiques Roadshow kept his blank expression, even when he was informed that his "beautiful" items were actually fakes.
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An Antiques Roadshow expert insisted that while a decorative box and urn were “fake”, they were not “valueless”.
PBS expert David Lackey presented a catalogue for an auction which the guest had previously attended in 1981 where he purchased “two impressive pieces of porcelain”.
The guest commented: “The auction was from the estate of a daughter of a gentleman by the name of JC Rogers, who was one of the early founders of Wamego, Kansas, where I grew up.”
Both the Sevres box and urn featured in the catalogue and their owner stated that he and his wife had paid $525 and $475 for the items respectively.
Lackey then began to appraise the decorative pieces but from the beginning, he had a tone which hinted that they weren’t the real deal.
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“This one here is a beautifully hand-painted and hand-gilded box”, he said, picking up the Sevres box.
“On the bottom, there is a mark that would indicate that it was made by the Sevres Company, which is a very famous and well respected French company.
“The letter marks inside it would indicate that it was made in the 18th Century.
“This piece here has some very interesting marks on it as well.
“Someone, a long time ago, has done a great deal of research and they’ve put all kinds of labels on the bottom indicating who made it, when it was made, where it was made and all that sort of thing.
“Also, here we have a very faint gold mark that would indicate that it was made by the Ludwigsburg Company sometime between the 1750s and the 1820s.
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Lackey then stated: “Unfortunately, the bad news is that they’re both fakes”, with the guest remaining silent and expressionless, simply nodding his head to the news.
The expert continued: “These were both made in Europe, probably in Germany or Austria, possibly in France, and they were hand-painted with very high quality skill in imitation of things that had been made before, then put fake marks on them about a hundred years ago.
“Modern scholarship in the last 20 or 30 years has shown that most of these things were actually not made by these companies at all.”
But Lackey insisted that it wasn’t all “bad news” as they were “still very valuable”.
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He continued: “Not all fakes are valueless, so actually your investment hasn’t turned out to be all that bad.
“This beautiful detailed box here would probably retail somewhere between $1,000 and $1,250 now, even with the spurious or pseudo Sevres marks on the bottom.
“And this beautiful urn here, due to the high decorative appeal and high quality, would probably retail easily for between $1,500 and $2,500.”
Once again, the guest had little to no reaction to this price and just ended his stint on the show, saying: “Thank you very much.”
Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on PBS.
