Antiques Roadshow guest mortified as she learns true value of £11 statue used as doorstop
An Antiques Roadshow guest found out the whopping sum of her sculpture, which she's always used for another purpose
An Antiques Roadshow guest was left shocked when she found out a certain item was worth a high amount. A young female guest on the US version of the BBC show, aired on PBS, was using a bronze statue as a doorstop, which she thought was worth $15. Show expert Ernest DuMouchelle told the young guest that it was a rare Pierre-Eugène-Emile Hébert Bronze sculpture worth about $8,000, leaving her shocked.
In the episode, the item holder revealed that the bronze statue was picked up by her grandmother. She said, "She [grandmother] got it either at a flea market or at a garage sale. That's where she gets almost everything. She got it for $15-$20 probably, and she got it because my sister, Porsche, my dad, and I all like Greek and Roman mythology, and she just saw it, and that's pretty much the only reason she got it." The expert educated the young woman about the rare Pierre-Eugène-Emile Hébert Bronze sculpture.
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Discussing the bronze statue, DuMouchelle said, "Well, one of the problems that you had when you were looking him up was that his first name is Pierre. So you had to know that this signature, which is here, Emile Hébert, is actually Pierre Emile."
Ernest pointed out that the construction of the statue was unique as well and added that it was dated 1867, the same year it won a gold medal at the Salon in Paris.
He said, "What I like about the piece is that first of all it's bronze, and it has the gold doré inlays on it, which are very, very nice."
Ernest also suggested that the young guest take the statue to a professional and have it cleaned, noting that the statue could be estimated to go to auction for $4,000 to $6,000.
When revealing it was a doorstop, the expert told the young woman, "Well, you'd better put it up on a pedestal now."
