BBC Antique Roadshow fans left baffled after £250k item receives devastating loss in valuation

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A BBC Antiques Roadshow guest was given a nasty shock after their item was valued at hundreds of thousands less than what they were hoping for.Antiques expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan delivered the devastating blow when the show stopped at Nottingham's Wollaton Hall after he examined a figure from the Kota tribe in Gabon.The owner had been expecting a valuation in the region of £250,000 for the prized item and was devastated to discover that instead of receiving a six-figure valuation sum, their item was actually only worth a fraction of this at £150.However, it's not the worst news as the owner revealed they had only paid £1.50 for the item over 10 years ago, the Mirror reports.Upon hearing this, Ronnie joked: "You really took a risk, didn't you?"The guest replied by explaining their reasoning as they said: "Well, I was intrigued by the fact that it looked as if somebody had put a lot of work into making it."Ronnie inspected the statue before saying: "When you unwrapped this, my heart really skipped a beat because it's one of my favourite tribal African figures. "This is a Kota reliquary guardian figure and they put these on the bones of their ancestors to protect them and they polished this metal. "And in the 19th century, they were brass and copper, this is just copper, the brass and copper were like gold to them.

They're so highly revered in the art world that they have one of these in the Metropolitan Museum in New York."The antique expert continued: "They're such iconic examples of African tribal art.

They hammer the metal over the wood sculpture and then they chase the metal with these designs."And it's the geometric form of them that makes them so desirable, and they influenced the greatest modern artists of all time