ModeL of Anthony gormLey’s AngeL of the north:
The first seven-figure valuation on the show came in a 2008 episode filmed in Gateshead – and is perhaps most remarkable for not really being an antique at all. The 6ft by 17ft model of Gormley’s famous sculpture had been in the offices of Gateshead Council for 13 years, ever since the sculptor produced it as a prototype for his 1998 masterpiece. Fine art expert Philip Mould said at the time: “It’s a great thrill to me that something produced in the past 15 years has broken the record for the most valuable item to have ever been on the show.” BROAD APPEAL: The show has unearthed a variety of treasures, from the Van Dyck, above, and Japonisme urn below, to the FA Cup, right the urn in 2014 for £668,000. “The auctioneer started the bidding at £100,000 and I just thought, ‘blimey’,” he said. “Then it kept going. It was incredible.” himself with excitement. “I think this might be one of the best pictures we have ever seen on the Roadshow,” he told Fiona Bruce. “Alma-Tadema is the most valuable Victorian artist today.”
The painting is now to be included in an exhibition of the artist’s work due to come to London this autumn. I recognised the importance of it,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily fragile – not something that you can just shove in the back of the car.”
Placing a value of £150,000 on the 300-year-old toys that had been in the family since 1705 he described it as “one of the most important English baby houses in existence”. When Sam Kester and Lynsey Choules, pupils at the Royal Hospital School in Suffolk, took along a portrait of Nelson that had been hanging in the common room to an episode in London in 2012, they suspected it might be old – but they never guessed it had been created in 1800 by artist Henry Edridge or that it was worth £100,000. “It is the sort of image of Lord Nelson that many collectors across the world would almost die for,” said expert Philip Mould. It didn’t look much at first glance but an 18-inch bronze cast of a rhino bought for £575 in 1942 was valued at £200,000 by Clive Stewart-Lockhart in a 2011 episode. The expert explained to a stunned Ann Sumner of Birmingham’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts that it was one of only three made in 1750 to depict “Miss Clara”, a famous rhino that toured the world in the 18th century.