'Antiques Roadshow' guest was in disbelief after expert revealed the staggering value of her chair

"Antiques Roadshow" has a reputation for leaving guests shocked. Sometimes even the experts of the show are gobsmacked. In one such instance, when a guest brought a precious Charles Rohlfs chair, expert John Sollo confessed that he was nervous to appraise it. Eventually, when he delivered the appraisal, the guest got the shock of her life.

An extraordinary find

In the episode, the guest shared that the unique-looking chair had been in her family for years, but nobody knew if it was of any value. "My mother found it in my grandmother's house in Dayton, Ohio, back in around the 1960s when they were settling up their estate. It was up in the attic; nobody else knew it was there," she told Sollo. 

She added that she didn't know a thing about the item, and she only brought it because she had never seen anything like it. Taking over from the guest, the expert shared that the chair had a mark at the back that looks like an R with a vertical saw. "That's the maker's mark for a very famous arts and crafts maker named Charles Rohlfs," he explained. 

He added that Rohlfs was a very "eccentric man," and he only worked in a studio by himself or with a handful of apprentices. "The whole design is very radical. It was the thought of furniture as sculpture, and this chair, as you can see, really goes a long way in blurring those boundaries between furniture and art," he explained.

Sollo further added that the item captured the essence of the arts and crafts movement, and it added creativity and a sense of beauty to arts and crafts. "Charles Rohlfs worked in oak mostly, but this chair is mahogany, which makes it very interesting," he noted. He then explained that the artist's furniture is very rare and absolutely sought-after among the best collectors in the country. 

Coming to the valuation, the appraiser estimated that the chair would sell anywhere between $80,000 and $120,000 at auction. The guest was in total disbelief as she asked, "You're kidding?" The appraiser assured her that he was serious, telling her that the item was extremely rare. "Congratulations, a fantastic chair. There's like one of four known in America. You have one of them," he said. 

In an update shared by the show, the guest explained that after learning the true value of the chair, her mother's financial advisors insisted on selling it as it had become a huge liability. "I think if something's worth $500 or $1,000, there's not a burden to families, but something as valuable as Nancy's chair becomes a burden. You have to worry about insurance; you have to worry about locking the front door; you have to worry about who's sitting in the chair," Sollo noted in the update. 

Thus, the guest shared that they finally sold the chair, and it went for a whopping $180,000 at an auction. "We were sad to see it go. Mom's still living today, she's 96, and so it has helped her out, so in that sense it was a good thing," she said in the end.