Antiques Roadshow: Ex-Welsh tennis player presents dresses
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A guest on a classic episode of Antiques Roadshow was eager to know how much a gold ring he discovered while gardening could fetch at auction. British jewellery specialist Geoffrey Munn left him blown away when he revealed the ring was made of gold and was Medieval. The item, which was “extremely valuable”, even needed to be reported to the guest’s local museums due to its worth and historic significance.
The guest explained the ring was found in some tomatoes in the dirt and he picked it up for a closer inspection.
“I thought it was from a Christmas cracker but I put it in my pocket and when I took it out of my pocket at home it was nice and shiny,” he explained.
“I thought it was obviously not out of a cracker and I had it for a few years before taking it to a jeweller in Cheltenham.”
The jeweller thought the ring was most likely a Victorian copy of a Roman ring.
“So we have kept it in a draw at home ever since then,” he told Geoffrey.
Geoffrey enlightened his guest on how the “marvellous” gold ring ended up in the ground.
“In actual fact, it came out of the ground the way that it went into the ground.
“It went into the ground 600 or 700 hundred years ago.”
The guest was gobsmacked and replied: “Oh golly!”
Geoffrey said the ring laid there for hundreds of years waiting for the guest to “bring it into the light again”.
“Gold never tarnishes, it remains the same, and the tiny stone at the top of the ring remains the same because it’s a sapphire,” he added.
“It’s travelled across Arabia and towards Europe and was traded and set into this ring.
“It’s a type of ring often worn by men of the cloth because a substruct of Christianity was old magic and men of the cloth could afford these things.”
Geoffrey described the ring as stunning and thought it was most unusual for the guest to have discovered it without the aid of a metal detector.
“You were just gardening and you accidentally pulled out a Medieval ring and this is enviable beyond belief, this is terribly exciting,” Geoffrey exclaimed.
The guest had an obligation to contact local museums about the find now he knew its historical significance to document it.
“This is an extremely valuable ring, there is precedent for this sort of ring fetching £8,000 and £9,000 at auction,” Geoffrey stated.
“Good God,” the guest replied in disbelief over the ring’s value. “Wow, I thought it would be a few hundred pounds in scrap gold.”
The crowd, who were waiting to hear the valuation, also looked stunned by the item’s staggering worth.
Antiques Roadshow episodes are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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