With petrol prices spiralling and inflation set to soar, most of us would welcome a financial windfall this spring. And yours could be just days away.
With research suggesting Brits could be sitting on billions of pounds worth of unconsidered items, attics are one of the most overlooked sources of hidden value in the UK.
Individual homes are thought to harbour an average of £7,200 of jewellery and £6,400 of antique furniture. That’s a total of £13,600.
According to the latest survey, the city of Derby alone has 105,700 households. So that’s close to £1.5m in our hometown alone.
My colleague Adam Schoon from BBC’s Antiques Roadshow has been doing his own ‘Hansons Roadshow’ in recent months unearthing treasures at salerooms around the UK.
And the next step of his round Britain tour is right here in Etwall on Wednesday.
A member of the prestigious Oriental Ceramic Society, Schoon is a leading authority on Asian art – one of the most dynamic areas in the antiques world.
All types of antiques excel under the hammer but today demand is particularly strong for Chinese and oriental ceramics and works of art.
Wealthy collectors from the Far East are keen to celebrate their artistic heritage and repatriate important antiques. This means rare objects can – and do – achieve life-changing amounts under the hammer.
But they are notoriously hard to value.
Complicated reign marks that can make the difference between a priceless piece and a worthless one.
And correctly identifying them takes years of study and are the domain of all but the most skilled specialist.
For example, an 18th-century Chinese vase set a record hammer price of £650,000 at Hansons in 2016 after being used as a doorstep for 36 years.
It had been acquired 1980s from a great aunt who had been an antiques dealer in Cornwall. But knowledge about the piece had diluted down the generations, to such an extent it was considered valueless.
A year later a Chinese plate found in a south Derbyshire kitchen cupboard sold for £230,000. In 2020 a tiny ‘teapot’ found during a lockdown clear-out in a Derbyshire garage, and almost given to a charity shop, sold for £390,000.
At a recent valuation, at Hanson Ross in Milton Keynes, Adam came across a delightful vase, known as Satsuma ware, named not after the fruit but the Japanese province where it originated.
It now has a guide price of £600-£800 at its upcoming sale.
But it’s not just Oriental pieces what are fetching fortunes.
On his recent stop at Hansons’ Oxfordshire saleroom in Banbury, Adam unearthed a stunning Victorian pendent with a central opal surrounded by diamonds in the shape of a star.
It was a jaw-dropping moment – worth of the actual Antiques Roadshow – when he gave it a price tag of £13,000-£18,000.
It demonstrates that humble jewellery box inherited from your mum or grandma, with its tangle of necklaces, rings and bracelets, could be worth a king’s ransom.
These gems are quite literally hiding in plain sight, with much of it dubbed ‘costume jewellery’ and overlooked by its owner..
Costume jewellery is defined as pieces made from non-precious materials such as glass, enamel, and base metals.
But some costume pieces – especially those from notable designers or specific eras – can fetch hundreds or even thousands of pounds.
Mid-20th century designs, particularly from the 1920s through the 1960s, are seeing a surge in demand.
In other cases, valuable gold pieces – like the Victorian pendent – go unrecognised because they are not hallmarked
Adam will go through each piece and, as well as identify anything of value, will – just as valuably – explain the history behind it.
If you think you have an unrecognised treasure in your home, you owe it to both yourself and the treasure itself to bring it out of the shadows.
Because it’s not always about money.
A lot of our vendors talk about wanting to share their historic gem with a wider audience.
What is the point, they reason, of having a memorable piece collect dust under the bed when they could pass it on to someone who would give their eye teeth to own it?
Don’t be shy, or embarrassed. Dig out that old jewellery box, or dust down that unidentified blue-and-white Chinese vase. What may appear worthless could, in reality, be a hidden treasure.
Adam Schoon will be at Hansons Auctioneers’ Etwall saleroom on Heage Lane on Wednesday April 15 from 10am-4pm.
