'Antiques Roadshow' guest who brought a tortoise sculpture gets a life-changing appraisal
Some guests on "Antiques Roadshow" do have an idea about the artifacts in their posession being precious, but their estimates are still off by a long margin. Japan in the late 19th and early 20th century was a global hub of art and culture. The items that came out of the country in that period are truly things to marvel at. So, it is not surprising that when a solid silver Japanese sculpture from that era came up on “Antiques Roadshow,” it was assigned a massive five-figure sum. The guest wasn’t expecting that at all and looked pleasantly surprised upon hearing its true value.
The sculpture was that of a tortoise made by Unno Shomin, a highly regarded court artist of the time. Not only was the tortoise solid silver, but it also had a few barnacles attached to its shells that were made of pure gold. Even if the sculpture didn’t look so good, those elements would have skyrocketed its value. However, craftsmanship and condition also play a big role in appraising such items.
“In addition to the material, there’s the workmanship. Not only the details of things like the barnacles, but the details of the scales, the face, the seaweed, all this is chased and done by hand,” the expert said. He was also impressed by the craftsmanship on the underside of the sculpture and the fantastic condition the guest had kept it in all these years. He’d said that his father had brought it back from World War II.
When asked how much he thought its value was, the guest said he didn’t have an idea. He still guessed it to be around $3,000 to $4,000. “Let’s add a little bit,” the expert responded. “I think it’s more like $20,000 to $30,000 at auction.” This was a lot more than what the guest expected. “That’s quite a bit. More than I thought it would be,” he said, laughing.
Japanese sculptures can be worth a lot of money. Sometimes, their valuation can leave a guest in tears. That’s what happened on a different episode of the show in which a guest almost broke down after the appraisal of a Japanese bronze sculpture that had been a family heirloom. The sculpture was made by artist Kaneda Kenjiro during the Meiji period. It was of a man who had dropped his hat and was bending over to pick it up.
“When I was a teenager, I saw this man at my grandmother's house. She said, 'One day I'm going to put this in my will and it'll be yours'. Recently, she just gave it to me," the guest said. "I like the fact that his hat is missing, it's gone, but he's trying to get to it. I like the movement that's in his clothes.”
When the time came for its valuation, the figure revealed was a lot higher than what the guest had expected. "For retail replacement purposes, I think a figure of $12,000 would be about right,” the expert said. The guest could not believe what she was hearing and shed a few tears as a result.
