An Antiques Roadshow visitor was almost speechless when she learned how much an antique watch her father purchased decades ago for £20 was worth. The newest installment of the BBC series took viewers to Powis Castle in Wales, where a lady displayed a huge pilot’s watch used during WWII.
This clock face was made for the German armed forces at the A. Lange & Söhne plant in Glashütte, Germany, which was devastated by Russian bombs on the last day of the war in May 1945. The expert who inspected the watch explained that it had been painted with the radioactive substance radium, prompting him to advise her to seek help if she ever attempted to disassemble it herself.
He opened the timepiece after stressing how much a Lange watch would be worth due to its scarcity, and lo and behold, it was manufactured by the firm in question.
The woman told the woman and the audience viewing that the name of the manufacturer’makes a huge difference price-wise,’ and she commented on how ‘lucky’ her father was to have found the watch.
‘He got it in Weymouth in a government surplus shop in the early 70s. He was always poking around old shops, antique shops in government surplus places,’ she said, revealing that her father only paid £20 for it, much to the expert’s shock.
‘Is that a good buy?’ she asked, as he replied: ‘Pretty good buy! I think I would have been delighted to have paid £20 for that then.’
After building up the suspense, he eventually disclosed how much the watch would be worth on the market today if it were coveted by collectors, estimating a price range of £8,000 to £10,000.
The lady was stunned beyond comprehension and responded, ‘Really? Wow!’ Despite the high price tag, she acknowledged that her father may be hesitant to sell the relic.
Last month, a man was astonished to learn on Antiques Roadshow that fabrics he discovered in a skip were worth a mind-boggling £250,000.
It turned out that the fabrics he’d discovered were the work of Althea McNish, a Trinidadian artist who became the first Black British textile designer to achieve worldwide acclaim. Viewers at home were so inspired by this finding that several swore to go looking for valuable things in bins in the future, just in case they made an amazing discovery as well.
Antiques Roadshow next airs on Sunday at 8pm on BBC One and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
Source My Celebrity Life.