Antiques Roadshow has once again left a guest lost for words after an expert valued their 'dirty shield' into the thousands of pounds.
The episode from February 14 saw the BBC show arrive at Bodnant Gardens in North Wales and there was shock from one guest as she brought her granddad's dirty old replica shield for the experts to pore over.
She was flabbergasted when she was told that it could fetch £10,000 at auction but, in tradition of the popular show, she then vowed that she wouldn't sell it on.
The shield has a scene from ohn Milton's 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, which is about the fall of Satan from heaven.
The piece was enough to raise the excitement in expert Duncan Campbell, with the guest telling him: "So I’ve brought a shield, the original is in the V&A museum in London, and it depicts Milton’s Paradise Lost.
"So my granddad moved abroad about 10 years ago and the last time that he was back in the UK, he passed it onto me.
"So he wants to keep it in the family.
"I think he had it for about 40 years and he’d got it perhaps from a friend."
The guest said that as it was a family "heirloom", so wouldn't be selling it on no matter how much it was worth, telling the expert that she also knew that it was a copy of the original piece.
Expert Duncan confirmed: "This is a copy of that original.
"They were made to give everybody a chance at looking at this wonderful thing.
“These are such good copies, it’s literally identical to the original.
"There's a little trick on the back, where they had to be marked with a badge to show that it wasn’t the original. There are hundreds of these."
Duncan added: "The original version was commissioned by a firm called Elkington & Co in 1866.
"In fact, it’s signed at the bottom here by both Elkington and the man that made it, whose name was Morel-Ladeuil."
He said that despite the antique "could do with a clean" he still put an estimated value of £10,000 on the item.
Duncan told her: "If you put that into an auction – I’m not suggesting you do because Grandpa would not be pleased – you’d walk away with about £10,000."
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