'Antiques Roadshow' guest falls on expert after he revealed her artifact was fake: 'You're joking...'
"Antiques Roadshow" guests usually make news for reactions ranging from breaking down to losing their balance after discovering the value of their items, which is higher than expected. But the real shock awaits those who walk in with an item, not knowing that it's a fake. A guest who bought an item for $40 thought it was an ancient artifact from China. However, the show's expert, David Battie, burst her bubble by revealing that the item was not more than a couple of years old and probably not even worth what she paid. Hearing this, the guest nearly collapsed on the appraiser out of disappointment as the crowd gasped.
The guest, who was an archaeology student, appeared to be quite excited as she bragged about the great deal she scored at a flea market. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t in my family. I found it in a flea market in southeast London, a few years ago, on a Sunday afternoon. It was among loads of house clearance things, and the guy didn’t really seem very interested in it. I’d just finished a part-time archaeology course, and I was just really intrigued by it. Because it had sandy earth, I presumed it was some sort of funeral offering,” she told Battie.
She further added that she bought the item for just $40 after some serious bargaining, as it was initially priced at $67. She told Battie that it appeared to be some ancient vessel that was used in rituals at Chinese funerals. The expert confirmed that the item was indeed made for funerals, as it served as an offering to the dead during the rule of the Han Dynasty in China.
“Indeed, these were grave goods. Almost invariably, they were buried and having been dug up, you get all this wonderful color building up here. This is cast bronze, and the copper is coming through – that’s because of acid attack by the soil. The thing that worries me is that this would normally be what we call a B disc, the eye, which actually has a hole in the middle," he explained. He further added that these items were buried along with "highly important officials" and they were buried under the elbows and above the head, over the B disc.
All of this information intrigued the guest, who thought she had scored a deal. However, when she asked Battie about the age of the item, the expert had to break the truth to her. “A couple of years," the expert responded honestly. Realizing that the item was fake, the guest collapsed on the expert's shoulder. “Oh no! You’re joking? Are you joking? Oh no, I’m so upset! I’m really upset. My life is over. It’s like a stab to the heart," she exclaimed after burying her face.
However, the expert told the guest that he hadn't finished yet. He told the guest that these forged items were kind of an investment for the future, as they did come from China. "They are casting it, they are carving it, because they still can afford the skilled craftsmen to do it. It’s a fantastic bit of work," he told the guest. He added that experts won't recommend people buying forged items, but if such items are being sold for $40, they should go and buy them. "Your children are going to thank you," he said in the end.
In the end, Battie estimated that if it was the real deal, then it would have been about 2,4000 years old and worth about a million pounds or over $1.3 million in the market, at the time.
