Antiques Roadshow guest giggles as dad’s £12 junk shop trunk worth small fortune
An Antiques Roadshow guest was amazed at the real value of a trunk that her dad had discovered at a junk shop years ago.
Antiques Roadshow guest reacts to valuation of ring
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow.
An Antiques Roadshow guest couldn’t help but laugh when she was told how much her £12 trunk was really worth.
The BBC daytime series set up shop at Ham House in Richmond to meet with guests from all walks of life and examine their unusual items.
One of which was a battered trunk that had clearly been made by designer Louis Vuitton.
Explaining its backstory to expert Mark Hill, its owner said: “It was bought by my father for me as a present to put in my first flat.
“He went to St Margaret’s to a little junk antique shop and he came back with that which he bought for £12.”
“Well it’s certainly been through the wars hasn’t it?”, Hill commented as the guest remarked: “It certainly has, it’s had a life.”
He continued: “As one would expect. In many ways, trunks like these for me talk about the history of travel in some aspects as well.
“So we might have had the sort of domed trunks of the 18th Century that’d be on a carriage or a coach or something like that.
“One of Louis Vuitton’s great innovations was the flat-top trunk which could be stacked in the new railway carriages.
“Then bang, along came the aeroplane. Heavy, large, kind of killed it for this sort of piece of luggage.”
Opening up the trunk, Hill showed off its webbed trays which he seemed impressed by but continued to state that it was a “much more standard trunk”.
When asked where it currently lives, she said: “It lives in my flat at the moment. We just have it in the corner. At the moment it’s covered up as well.
“We fostered cats so we have to keep them away from the trunk, otherwise it’d have more character than it’s already got.”
He then went on to point out it had “typical quality Louis Vuitton construction” with the printed fabric and strong metal corners and suggested it was from either the 1920s or 1930s.
Summarising, he said: “You paid 12 whole pounds or your dad paid 12 whole pounds. £3,000?”
The guest laughed: “Wow. That’s rather nice. It’s going back where it was though.”
Hill asked if it would be covered up again, to which she replied: “While we’ve got the cat. When there’s no cats, we’ll uncover it.”
Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
