'Antiques Roadshow' guest says 'shut the front door, girl' after hearing the value of her violin set

“Antiques Roadshow” is the go-to place for people to know the true value of their priceless family heirlooms, and although nothing could be worth more than the memories attached to them, guests are still stunned by the appraisals. Some of them fetch a price that is a lot more than the owner's expectations, and that usually brings out the best response. That’s what happened when a guest brought a violin, a bow, and some tools. The appraisal value of each of the items came as a shock, and she left a happy woman.

After the appraisal was done, the guest revealed that the violin originally belonged to her grandfather, who suffered a terrible accident in his younger days. “My grandfather was picking up coal with his brothers by the train track, and he slipped and fell and the train cut his foot off,” she said. According to a report in Express, the guest claimed that her grandfather also made violins. This one, however, was by a man named Nicholas Heinz.

“His father made him go up and down the ladder with a peg leg from just right above the ankle,” the guest continued. “He decided he didn’t want to do that anymore, so since he loved working with wood…he left his father and went to learn how to make violins.”

The expert, Claire Givens, was highly impressed by the instrument and believed that it was worth a lot of money. She said that the bow was worth $4,000. “Holy Hannah! Wowzer. Shut the front door, girl! Are you serious?” the guest asked in shock. She called the violin her “baby” when it was time for it to be appraised and was just as surprised when she heard that it was worth $12,000. Givens called it a “master quality instrument."

“Oh, sweetie, I love that,” the guest said. She had also gotten several tools, a picture, and some letters to the show, which were worth some money. “All of the ephemera that you’ve brought, the tools and the pictures and the letters, I would say combined with the value, would add $3,000 to its value,” the expert revealed. “Oh my goodness,” the guest reacted. The total value of everything the guest brought was $19,000.

Turns out that the guest’s siblings had the choice to learn the instrument, but neither of them wanted to. She, however, did learn the instrument and developed a special bond with it. “In second grade, I started playing. It’s my heart. It has always been my heart, but see, now you’ll make me cry,” she said.

“This is one for the archives to be sealed in a time capsule and sent into the future so others may know what humans were capable of,” one viewer commented under the clip on YouTube.

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