Antiques Roadshow guest floored as item given £250k value – but there's a huge problem

BBC show Antiques Roadshow's antiques advisor Ronnie Archer-Morgan advised a fortune-hunter that his £1.50 charity shop find could be worth a quarter of a million pounds.

However, the African tribal figurine wasn't quite the lucrative purchase it had first appeared to be. Despite Ronnie admitting his heart had "skipped a beat" when he first saw it, he was in for a crushing disappointment after it emerged that it was just a cunning copy of the real thing.

The guest had made his find in a Cambridge charity shop a decade earlier - and it didn't take him long to part with such a small sum of money. "[The figurine] was right among the junk, and it cost me the grand total of £1.50," he revealed proudly during the BBC show.

"I was intrigued by the fact that it looked as if somebody had put a lot of work into making it." Ronnie confessed: "When you unwrapped this, my heart really skipped a beat. It's one of my favourite tribal African figures.

"It's from a tribe, in Gabon. They are just south of Nigeria and this is a Kota guardian figure and they put these on the bones of their ancestors to protect them." He continued: "They polish this metal and in the 19th century, the brass and copper... was like gold to them."

He went on to reveal to the gobsmacked guest that the figurines are "so highly revered in the art world" that one is on display in New York's prestigious Metropolitan Museum. "They are such iconic examples of African tribal art," he praised.

"They hammer the metal over the wood sculpture and then they chase the metal with these designs and it's the geometric design of them that makes them so desirable. They also influence the greatest modern artists of all time. They are very, very sought after."

It didn't take long before he dropped the bombshell that one almost identical figurine had sold for £250,000. That's the price of the average UK apartment, according to recent stats - so the sum wasn't to be sniffed at.

However, he was brought back down to earth with a bang after Ronnie noticed one crucial detail.

"Unfortunately, this one is a very fine copy," he sadly advised his disappointed guest.

"It's slightly the wrong size and this was probably made in 1980. One like this is probably worth about £150. Unfortunately not the quarter of a million that one of them actually made."

The man sighed, before looking at the bright side and commenting that the carefully crafted dupe was still worth "a lot more" than he'd paid.

Ronnie responded: "It's 100 times more than what you paid for it!"

Check out more Antiques Roadshow adventures on Sundays at 8pm.