'Antiques Roadshow' guest says 'it's lot more than I thought' after hearing the value of her jewelry
Someone with Victorian jewelry lying around at home would come to “Antiques Roadshow” expecting a hefty appraisal for the item. But even after conducting their own research, the estimates that people arrive at don't even get close to the value that experts reveal. One such item was a ring with a diamond embedded in it, and the guest was shocked to find out that it was worth a lot more than what she had thought.
The guest claimed that she had received the ring from her mother-in-law, who had received it from her mother-in-law. The expert said that the ring was made of gold and had a broad trumpet front to it, features that were common for jewelry from the late Victorian era. But the star of the show was the shimmering diamond. It wasn’t just any regular diamond, but a highly rare version of the stone.
It was a blue diamond, which was very rare as far as the expert was concerned. “To see a blue diamond of this kind of color is extremely rare, and in fact, one sees one per year or two years,” he said. There are several variations of a blue diamond when it comes to color. There are greyish-blue diamonds, light greyish-blue diamonds, grey-blue diamonds, and many others.
“Because it’s a Victorian stone, it means that all the weight is at the back of the stone. So in fact, the weight of the diamond probably weighs about 0.4 of 1. So it’s approaching half a carat in size,” the expert revealed. Putting a value on a stone like this would be tricky without certification. For this, the stone would have to be taken out of the ring and sent to the United States for that purpose.
“It is only in the United States that fancy diamonds like this get a certificate that purchasers have sufficient confidence in,” the expert explained. Placing a value on such an item would be tricky without certification, as there were a lot of variables. Therefore, the expert used past valuations of similar items as a reference. He shared a story of a more modern cut diamond that had been sent to the States for certification.
After all the formalities had been completed, the stone was up for sale in New York and was able to fetch $42,000. “Good God!” the guest exclaimed in surprise. “Now, it would be very dangerous indeed to sit here and say that that diamond is going to be worth that kind of money,” the expert warned the guest. However, he still placed an impressive tentative value on it.
“All I can say is that it ought to be worth, say, between £10,000 ($13,669) and £25,000 ($34,173). When asked if that was a bit of a shock, the guest responded, “It’s a lot more than I thought, yeah.” The expert called it the most extraordinary find that one doesn’t get to see all that often.
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