Chepstow Racecourse 1 Antiques Roadshow

Our location today is on a 200-metre high bank of the river Wye.

Behind me, the Severn Bridge and Bristol.

In front of me, the undulating hills of Monmouthshire.

What a view!

Welcome to the Antiques Roadshow from Chepstow Racecourse in Cymru.

Our location today brings us to the beautiful Wye Valley

on the Welsh borders.

Downstream from Tintern Abbey is a setting with such stunning views,

a grand house was built here.

Today, Piercefield House on the outskirts of Chepstow

in Monmouthshire is a ruin.

Once the home of wealthy sugar plantation owners,

today the grounds are the site of a very different attraction.

And what a way for me to make my arrival -

on this magnificent horse, Aragon!

In 1921, the Chepstow Racecourse Company acquired the estate

and there's been racing in the grounds of Piercefield since 1926.

Chepstow is a dual-purpose racecourse.

It holds 28 races every year, 14 over the flat

and 14 over these terrifying-looking jumps.

I'm told they used to race between two church steeples,

hence the name "steeplechasing",

but there'll be no jumps today

as we prepare for another Antiques Roadshow.

Of course, this is a perfect item for the Antiques Roadshow

on a sunny day like today because it's an umbrella and a hat stand.

Do you use it at home? No. No, we don't, no.

My mum used it. She had a lovely hall

that it could be displayed in, so it looked really nice there.

So you don't use it for umbrellas and hats at all?

No. We had it in the garage.

In the garage?! In the garage.

Do you know anything about it at all?

I understood that it came from the Black Forest

and it's carved out of one tree.

Oh, right... Is that right?

One tree, no. It's not one tree,

but it is a large lump of wood that's been used.

I think it's very good carving. It's brilliant.

It's a school of carving.

I want to get rid of this myth that it's Black Forest. OK.

Black Forest is lovely cakes with cherries and cream.

Everyone's always called them Black Forest,

but we now know that they're made in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland,

not in the Black Forest area,

in a little town called Brienz.

The way this carving school came about in the early 19th century -

so let's say 1800, 1810 -

was that in the Swiss mountains, they were snowed in one winter

and a man called Christian Fischer started carving little objects

and this developed over the years into this whole school of carving.

These things were handmade out of linden wood

and so they realised they could make money during the winter by carving

when they were snowed in. I see. OK.

There's still a school of carving. There's a four-year apprenticeship.

You can learn to make this sort of thing today. Are they still made?

Not like this. This is a bit elaborate. Any idea how old this is?

Not really. I haven't got any idea. That's no help to me at all(!)

I thought you were going to tell ME that.

They were made generally in the latter part of the 19th century.

You often see them with bears.

This is lovely with doggie here.

It's been quite well rubbed and scuffed. I think children

have been playing with him.

But also I think children have been very naughty.

I can imagine a toddler boy, seeing this wonderful shotgun.

Somebody's been playing with the trigger. Did you break that?

No, it was already broken.

What do you think about the dead animal hanging from your hat stand?

That's what I don't like. I don't like the theme at all.

I don't like the hunting theme. I don't like guns much.

It doesn't appeal to you as an object? No.

To a lot of people, it does though.

The condition isn't brilliant. There are one or two chips and scratches,

but it is unusual and rare.

I'm going to say an auction figure between ?2,000 and ?3,000.

2,000 and 3,000?

Between 2,000 and 3,000. Gosh, that's more than I thought, anyway!

Howell James Co, Regent Street, watchmaker to the Queen.

Good company. VERY good company.

Excellent. Tell me what it is.

It's a carriage clock that was always on my grandmother's mantelpiece

when I was a child. I was always fascinated by it

and my grandmother actually promised that she'd leave it to me

and in due course, in 1988, when she passed away, she did,

a lot of which time it's sat in the case

and only recently, I thought it's too nice to sit in the case,

so it's been out on display.

It still looks a little bit unloved and it deserves far more.

It does. The difficulty is knowing what you can do with such things

and who to trust them to. OK.

It is, in fact, superb gilt brass

and it is English through and through.

The green, which is all the way round the clock, is malachite,

which is a semi-precious stone mined in various parts of Africa.

But the contrast between this lovely, lovely, wavy malachite

and the gilt brass

is quite extraordinary. It's a lovely-looking thing.

The case itself, in the Gothic Revival taste,

is beautifully engraved throughout.

And then side panels as well.

The back door is again superbly engraved

and I hope that we'll see that retailer's name on the back.

Just inside the back door it says it all again,

so they would have been...

I won't say the maker, but they would have been the retailer of it.

It is a lovely, lovely thing.

What sort of date would it have been made?

Well, this one, I'm going to put a date on, with the Gothic Revival,

I'd like to say just prior to 1850.

Would it predominantly have been kept in the case?

The case has a removable front.

Remember, it's a travelling clock, a carriage clock, and it would,

when put into luggage, have had this,

but if somebody wanted to see the time on the journey,

they literally would have had it

with that slipped into the back of the case there.

Did you know it went there? No.

That's its little reserve thing,

then it would have been carted around like that,

so you could see the time.

It would have been a very expensive thing new, really expensive,

and now, although there are one or two cracks in the malachite,

I'm going to say that at auction, in that current condition,

it's still going to fetch...

probably ?5,000, maybe ?6,000.

Good heavens! I'm really rather jealous. Thank you very much indeed.

I have seen lots of things in bottles -

ships in bottles,

scenes in bottles - but I have to say

I haven't seen anything in a light bulb.

This is an extraordinary object because there's a cathedral in it.

Where did it come from?

Is it something that you sit up at night doing?

Is this a little known skill of the area? No, not me at all.

It is a model of Lincoln Cathedral. It's got the three towers.

Yes, of course. So you're a Lincoln girl? I'm from Lincoln, yes.

We emigrated down here to get away from the cold winds. Yes.

It was made by a German prisoner of war at the end of the war.

Right. And he used to come to our house.

They were allowed to do odd jobs, so he did a bit of gardening.

And he used to come for Sunday lunch occasionally.

And when he was due for repatriation, he gave that to my father.

It was quite appropriate because we were in the electrical trade as well,

so I should think the electric light bulb came from us

and that's as much as I know, really.

It's a great story.

The only other examples of things in light bulbs in a public collection

is in a museum in Whitby,

and there I know they've got lots of different things in light bulbs.

How do they get it in? I know!

Ships with bottles, they do pieces of string, don't they?

Yes, they do the rigging and pull it upright.

We've never known how that was done.

The secret, I think, is that there is a little cut made

behind the metal casing here

which gives an opening,

which means when this is all taken to pieces,

and it would have been assembled in pieces,

you can, with a pair of tweezers,

get those pieces down into the body of the light bulb

and get them set into the plaster.

Yeah. That would just be ordinary plaster of Paris, wouldn't it?

That's ordinary plaster of Paris and each piece would have been painted

before it was put in.

All the trees and things. Exactly. And all the little windows.

I think we've given the secret away now. Yeah. Lovely.

As a girl, did you ever leap up to the top of those towers?

Yes, many times. This was wartime, wasn't it? Yes.

We used to take, you know, airmen and that

and say, did they want to look round the cathedral?

But I've been many times since. It's a lovely building.

It's a wonderful piece of, I suppose, prisoner-of-war work,

first of all, but more modern prisoner-of-war work.

I also think it's great that it's in a light bulb,

relating to your father's business,

and I think that it has a sort of quirky value.

I would put the value at around ?300... Oh, goodness! Maybe ?350.

When would you ever see another one?

No, that's true. Putting it into that context, it's a real curiosity.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about it, Andy.

It's been hanging around for years. Yeah, it's been hanging around,

in fact, since about 1797.

You know, this was a disposable object.

You used it and you bunged it

or maybe you returned it to the vintner.

The whole original purpose of sealing a bottle was because,

that way, you got your bottle back.

You organised for your bottles to be made and sealed.

We've got Samuel Pepys writing about how he went down to the Mitre Tavern

100 years earlier to see "my bottles filled with my name wrote on them".

So there's a long history, 100 years at least,

of bottle sealing and the point was that you got yours back.

You didn't get any riff-raff's bottles. "I want MY bottles!"

The bottle comes in a variety of seals and non-seals.

Non-seals, the least desirable.

Date seal, going up in the world.

Similarly, initials, go up in the world.

But this is the all-singing, all-dancing version.

So, early bottles are worth more than later bottles.

This is a later bottle, 1797.

Nonetheless, it's interesting that wine bottles, disposable objects,

have become extremely collectable

with the surge in demand for the finest wines.

So, this niche market for high quality wine in America,

amongst the super-wealthy, and China has gone really strong.

A couple of years ago, this would have been worth 200, 300, 400 quid,

but by adding the letters...

If you work the letters out at between 25 and 50 quid a letter,

I think you'll get to an auction value today of about ?700 to ?800.

Goodness me! For a bottle? That's incredible.

Now you've got to find out who he was. I will.

You've brought us along today a collection of sporting medals

and contemporary photographs, all relating to a member of your family?

Our great-uncle Frederick Humphreys who took part in three Olympic Games

in '08, '12 and '20,

tug-of-war, police team, City of London Police teams.

So that's... That's our great-uncle. The guy here on the left? Yes.

With two of his brothers who were also in the City of London Police.

That's him again? That's him again. Previous to that, he was a wrestler.

He did demonstrations all over Europe and the country.

It's sad that, today, the Olympics doesn't have the tug-of-war.

It does not. I think it finished in 1920. It did.

And in '08, they competed against the Metropolitan Police team

and then in 1912, they amalgamated.

So, in 1908, how did he do?

He got gold. Oh, wow! Which we haven't got, unfortunately.

That one is the REAL gold one and we don't know what happened to that.

So, 1908 was London. 1908 was London.

And then the whole team went over to Stockholm for 1912?

That's right. How did they do then?

They got silver, which is this one over here.

And also my husband's family,

his great-uncle, was also in that team, so they were both winners.

Then in 1920, they went to Antwerp where they got the gold,

which, unfortunately, is not really gold.

And we do know that.

After 1912, sadly,

gold medals and silver medals were not made of gold and silver.

I assume it was because of the number of competitors there were

and the new races that were happening,

it just got too expensive and maybe the austerity after the war.

But even the gold medals today that are given out,

they have no gold in them. No.

It's sad you lost the 1908 one

because that is the first London Games,

so that has a particular association to collectors and it's very early.

I remember my uncle as an older man. I did meet him when I was a child.

He was big. The whole family were quite big, six foot-plus.

They had to be for that type of sport. They look big, beefy guys.

You don't want to mess with them, do you? No.

You know, collecting Olympic memorabilia

is relatively a new sort of collecting field,

so the market is not that sophisticated yet.

There hasn't been a lot on the market to compare like for like.

However, I love the story behind it

and the idea that not only have you got the Olympic medals,

but all his other medals that he won.

I'm going to lot the collection together,

rather than pull them out individually.

Should you ever have to sell them,

I would see a collection like this fetching between ?5,000 and ?8,000.

Good heavens!

That does surprise me. I was thinking hundreds.

No, I'm quite flabbergasted with that.

We're just very proud. Thank you very much.

If I were to tell you that one of these nutcrackers

is worth over ?6,000,

you'd think I was, well, crackers. Boom-boom!

But one of them is and it's this week's Basic, Better, Best challenge

set by Adam Schoon. Three nutcrackers, one worth ?300,

one worth ?3,500

and then one worth ?6,500.

Just... Exactly, gosh! Just for a nutcracker.

We'll ask our visitors this week

and you at home if you can work out which is basic, better, best.

Do you want to come round and have a look?

You think it's this one? You've all come up with a different one.

That's not helping me at all.

You know, I love Second World War binoculars

because, in my view, they're some of the best binoculars ever built.

What do you know about these and why have you got them?

My father was a submarine CO during the war

and on the 10th of May, 1945,

all the German U-boats were told to surrender.

And the U-249,

which was the first German U-boat to arrive in UK waters,

came into Weymouth Bay and surrendered

and Dad was sent down to be the prize crew.

And he went on board with his crew

and, um...took command.

The first thing Dad liberated was this lovely pair of binoculars

and then, amongst the other things he brought home,

was the visitors' book of the U-249

which is this book here. That's this?

That's the official visitors' book for the submarine. That's amazing. Let's have a quick look inside.

Now, here you've got a photograph. This is your father here?

This is my father there. With the tin hat on? With the tin hat on.

And these binoculars...

Those are the binoculars? ..round his neck already. Good grief!

And there standing alongside him is Lieutenant-Commander Koch

who was the German commanding officer

of the submarine up until the point that Dad took it over.

And the previous owner of the binoculars? Yes.

We've got some other photographs and he's got a smile on his face.

He doesn't look very happy there.

I don't blame him. I wouldn't either.

These binoculars, in my view, are probably the best ever built.

Yes. They're fantastic. I believe so.

They've got the most incredible optics. They're incredibly bright.

They're a fixed focus, so you can't focus them. There is an adjustment for each eye. There is indeed.

I can show you, in fact. Show me.

OK, if we look at the binoculars,

they've got a rubber bumper round them.

Yes. And then you take this rubber off.

That looks a bit stiff. It's quite tight. Pretty tight. Yes.

I guess with going up and down the conning tower,

they would have been bashed about.

You can see...

Dad used these binoculars the rest of his submarine career.

He used them himself? Yes, and then he gave them to me.

I used them when I was a captain of submarines

in the '70s and '80s.

There's the adjusting screw there. Yes, plus and minus.

These are your binoculars

once you're issued with them and you set your own focus on them. Right.

Then put the rubber bumper back on.

"BLC", those are the code letters of the manufacturer? That's right.

These are Zeiss binoculars.

That's the code letter for Zeiss, you're quite right, yes.

These are certainly superb binoculars.

Now, on their own, these binoculars have sold

for, recently, ?1,200, ?1,400. On their own.

However, because you've got the U-boat visitors' book

and the provenance surrounding them

and you've got photographs and you've got, presumably,

all sorts of other things... Yes.

..it makes it a very important lot.

You could certainly double that, in my view,

to ?2,500 to ?3,000,

and it wouldn't surprise me if somebody paid even more

on the day at auction.

It's very unusual to find. Yeah.

Very unusual. Well, fantastic.

I was given it, when I got married, by my husband,

so, 1981, and he had inherited it from his uncle.

He believes that it was probably bought by his great-uncle

when he was out in South Africa in the Boer War.

That's about all I know.

Right at the tail end of the 19th century. Yeah.

It's made in round about 1900, so that would be the right period.

It's a very simple pendant

and you could be forgiven, when you look at it,

for thinking it isn't very inspiring,

not the most demonstrative piece of jewellery, which it's not,

but there's something rather unusual about it.

Now, the stone in the middle is a sapphire.

It's polished in the cabochon, in the domed form of the sapphire.

And this was a feature of stones, particularly in round about 1900,

when quite a lot of specimen stones were coming on to the market

that were a bit unusual

and collectors would buy these sorts of stones

because they were a little bit different. Right.

In direct sunlight, or when light pours down

on top of the surface of the stone,

it reveals a rather unusual characteristic

and that is a six-rayed crossing star effect.

OK. In other words, we call these star sapphires

and the star in this particular piece is a very, very fine one.

It's very sharp, it's very prominent and it's very central.

And this is how we value sapphires.

It's this typical, characteristic chalk-blue colour,

but because of the fact that the star is so central

and because it's so sharp, it's a collector's gem.

Now, the frame is prosaic,

it's four little diamonds set in quatrefoil cluster formation

and I just want to mention that

because that's the brooch pin that you can screw

into the back of the frame

to convert it, if you so desired, into a separate brooch.

Do you wear it as a brooch?

No, it's too heavy and it droops. Does it drop forward? Yeah.

So you wear it as a pendant? Yeah.

It might be pleasing to hear

that it's worth something in the region of ?4,000.

GASPS OK. Thank you very much.

This is a rather bawdy picture, isn't it?

Well, it is a bit fruity, yes.

Fruity in more ways than one!

It's wonderful.

So where did you get it from?

I've known it all my life.

It was in a house that my parents bought in 1949.

It was left behind by the previous owners above the fireplace.

I don't think my father paid anything for it. I was one at the time.

So, we moved in and I've known it all the time.

What a great thing to get with a house!

This picture is in wonderful, original condition.

You can see this panel has been made up of three pieces of wood.

Then you can see the flaking on the right-hand side.

That's due to dampness getting into the ground.

We've got it in a Victorian frame, but it's on an old panel. Yeah.

In fact, this subject matter is 16th century.

Is it as old as that? Yeah.

And that's what it is. Now, when was it painted?

I think fairly close to that because looking at the panel,

it's got that age. I love it.

In my eyes, that's a very commercial picture. Brilliant.

There's an artist called Joachim Beuckelaer

who is 1500s, Flemish.

It's quite in his style, but it's not good enough, because if it was,

it would be worth a lot of money.

Right. But I think this is still quite valuable. Yes.

Even with a split and flaking,

I think a lot of people will like this

and I think it will make certainly ?5,000 to ?7,000...

That's interesting. If not 6 to 8.

It's very nice. It's got everything. Right. Brilliant.

These appear to be really stunning vases in Sevres porcelain,

but I get the impression that at one time, they looked very different.

Do you know much about them? Not really, no.

We've had them, what, 55 years.

We bought them off my brother-in-law who used to trawl antique...

well, second-hand shops as they were 50-odd years ago in Bristol,

buying up things that he fancied.

I don't even know what we gave for them.

Let's go back to the 1830s

when Sevres porcelain from the 18th century

was worth a huge amount of money.

Vases were worth a fortune then and there weren't enough to go around,

so there became quite an interesting industry creating vases

for collectors at that time.

When I look at the shape of this,

I get the impression there's two different shapes here.

We've got the...

Can you imagine that perhaps as a teacup? A teacup, yes.

And that as a teapot lid? Yes.

Because these are part of a different tea set.

Oh, right.

The Sevres porcelain factory produced a lot of simple designs,

little patterns of flowers and bugs and rather simple patterns,

and what collectors wanted were the coloured grounds,

the richly painted birds, the turquoise grounds with the gilding,

and specially made as vases.

And decorators came along

and bought up these cheap tea sets with no decoration

and changed them and they made them into vases.

If we look around the back of this vase, on this side,

there's a little mark. You probably won't have noticed this.

A little scar. Can you see it under there? Yes.

Imagine a handle coming out there. Yes. That was a teacup.

Goodness! But they knocked the handle off, ground it down, and ended up

with a nice, plain shape to put rather better decoration on,

so they added the best style of Sevres painting

from what would have been done in the 1750s

and they made a pair of fakes in a way,

creating copies of the real thing.

Goodness me!

But there's good news as well as bad

because although they're fakes, they're jolly good quality.

I love the ormolu. This is really good quality, gilded bronze.

Mounts on both of them.

That one's lost... Do you have the handle? Yes, I do.

It's just come off, has it? Yes.

I never got round to replacing it.

That can be mended. It can be put back together again.

This ormolu is good quality.

It's wonderfully-done Rococo revival. That was made in the 1830s,

probably in London.

Probably these are British rather than, say, French.

Adding the decoration to them to create what would have been then

the equivalent of many thousands of pounds today.

They're probably worth, even with damage,

?1,000. Goodness me!

I can't believe that.

We just put them in the cabinet and forgot about them.

Remember these three nutcrackers I was discussing earlier on

as part of our Basic, Better, Best challenge? One worth ?300,

one worth ?3,500 and one worth ?6,500.

Well, look, I have decided

that I'm going to order them in preference.

This is best because I like it the most. Now, Adam,

before you tell me, these are all known as treen.

Just explain what that is.

It's a lovely word. It covers a massive range of objects.

Simply small objects made of wood.

Made out of tree. Just add an N and you've got the word.

Looking at these nutcrackers,

certainly a couple of them have got astonishing values.

What should we be looking at?

Firstly, you should look for style, the style of the carving.

You should also be looking at the type of wood and also the build-up

of a patination through use.

And there's nothing more earthy than a nutcracker. It's held in the hand,

it has to exert a bit of pressure to crack the nut.

A well-made nutcracker should last an awful long time.

Go on, talk us through it.

How do we work out the respective values of these?

It's not easy, but here we go.

This one you've got down as Basic.

I'm delighted to say you've got off to a good start.

This is the basic one. Notice the flat features,

very typical of a 17th-century English nutcracker.

It has this stylised headgear

and it finishes with a substantial spherical knob,

which is obviously good for strength, but...

the big "but" is that nutcrackers of an early period

were reproduced in the 19th and early 20th century

and that's exactly what this is. Oh, I see.

It's basic from the point of view that it's an Arts and Crafts copy

of a much earlier one.

So, thus, ?300-worth.

So the better one worth ?3,500, a massive leap... A big jump.

I'm going to go - because you've got these the wrong way round -

this is the better. Oh.

I'm going to just demonstrate...

Oh! Do you know, I thought it might be

because this is so ornate, but it was so charming. It is charming.

It is the primitive style of them that I love. This is unusual.

It's a flat-face lady.

Again, if you have a raised nose and features sticking out,

when you use it they're more likely to get broken,

so the British standard is flat features, nothing sticking out.

And this is made of boxwood, one of the hardest timbers.

So how old is this? This one, early 18th century.

About 1720.

But it's the face of a woman.

Normally, they're men, so this is quite scarce from that angle.

This one is in astonishingly good condition.

?3,500 would probably be about the price you'd pay. Gosh.

For something like this.

Because of its fabulous condition, it could even be worth more.

So there we are.

This brings us to the best.

Quite a few people thought so because it's so beautifully carved.

I thought there might be a counterintuitive thing going on,

but it is fantastically ornate.

I actually chose one that had a very old repair.

At the sides are these metal plates.

Yes. Which themselves could be 200-year-old repairs.

Believe it or not, this piece is late-16th century. Gosh.

That has been cracking nuts for centuries.

It's probably French, could be Italian. It's boxwood again,

so it's given it that hardness, but it's like melted toffee.

It's just gorgeous. Handled so much.

And one delight of treen is that it's so beautiful to handle.

It's light, it's crisp, you can touch the decoration.

And it's got this bearded fellow with this wonderful swag of hair,

a lovely acanthus scroll for the front lever. It's got everything.

?6,500.

Gosh. Well, they're absolutely beautiful.

I didn't know anything about nutcrackers until you came along.

I don't know how well-versed you were. I'd better put these in order.

So Basic...

Better...and Best.

There's nothing that I could imagine

that would brighten up a day more than this.

It's a psychedelic, decorated cart. Tell me about it.

Well, it's a Sicilian farm cart.

It's in festive harness.

Otherwise, they use them as everyday...or they did.

In Sicily? In Sicily, yes.

So they would use it for transporting wine, wood...

Farm stuff, anything.

But nothing too heavy. It's quite small.

Were they used in the rural landscape or the towns?

This came from the foot of Mount Etna.

It sounds as though there's some personal experience here.

It started with a stallion donkey

that was in a field waiting to go for salami.

And instead of bringing motorcycles old ones, back from Italy,

which we'd taken the vehicle for,

we ended up with a stallion donkey of 11 months in the back.

There was a donkey you found that was going to be used for salami?

Yes. Is that the usual use for donkeys in Sicily? Really?

I think it was in those days, yes.

These days being the '50s, '60s? Em, yes. The '60s.

And did this become a passion for you, donkey rescuing? Yes.

What's that?

I was going to say. That was four that we brought back together.

One was nearly 16 hands high. This one looks more like a mule.

Yes. After that it became anything out of the market,

or any friends that had got some. Amazing.

This is obviously a donkey cart. It's much too small for a horse.

This is the thing.

Most of them that are left are the big ones for horses.

Have you got a picture of the cart in its heyday?

Yes, that's her.

With the dress and everything. Oh, that's fantastic.

Is this you dressed up in this outfit? Yes. Many years ago!

And the name of the donkey? Marisa. Marisa.

And here's the cart itself. Did you use it for display? Shows?

With the Donkey Breed Society we mainly collected for charity.

Amazing. Let's just enjoy the object.

First, there's the harness itself with the glittering sequins

and the mirrors that would have caught the sun and really flashed.

And when one gets into the body of the cart,

there's a wonderful story going around the side,

which looks as if it's about Orlando.

There was this wonderful Italian poem in the 16th century

called Orlando and it may be that these scenes

are scenes from that poem.

But inside there are the colours, obviously, of the Italian flag

and these decorated spokes - extraordinary with the figures

with their plumed helmets.

On the back here is the name Domenico Di Mauro. Yes.

The man who painted it. That's right. That's where we got it.

And he is considered to be one of the greatest exponents

of decorating carrettos

in the 20th century. So you've got a real masterpiece here.

I would have said it was new

at the time you bought it in the 1960s,

but the actual carcass of the cart is an earlier one.

It's a tricky thing to value.

The market for this - who knows where it is?

All I can say is that it's an incredibly decorative object

and you could imagine somebody really falling for it,

whether they own a donkey or not.

So I would put the value at around ?1,500. Really?

But it's lovely that you've preserved a piece of...

The donkeys have all gone now, I'm afraid. The donkeys have gone.

Age is MY problem, actually!

Well, you've looked after many donkeys in your time. Yes.

They've all gone, but the cart survives.

Well done, you, for looking after it. Thank you.

And keeping it in all its glory.

I was sitting at my table

watching this guitar case wending its way

along the queue, willing it to arrive at my table.

And I opened this case and what did I see?

This beautiful Slingerland Maybell guitar.

Now, tell me a little bit about it from your point of view. Right.

I always remember it in the house,

my father playing it, but not as a normal guitar.

As a slide guitar.

Right. Hawaiian music.

It's funny you should say that. It has a very high action on it.

I'm a guitarist and I can't play this guitar.

It's had a brass bridge put on it,

which puts the action right up to play slide guitar.

So he didn't play it like this, he played it like that. On his lap.

Now, that's very interesting. The model is a Nighthawk.

It's an archtop guitar.

This dates from the late 1930s.

I think this model was introduced I'm sure in around about 1936.

So it's a very, very old guitar.

At what point did your father acquire it?

1944. We actually got a receipt.

Would that be what this piece of paper is? That's that. Let's look.

Arcade Music Shop.

"Everything in the musical line". In Pontypridd. ?15, 10 shillings.

Yeah. That was a lot of money.

He said it was about four weeks' wages at the time.

So what possessed him to pay that?

I don't know. He said he liked it, he went into the shop and bought it.

Gosh, I would have liked to have seen your father playing it.

I've got a photo of him here.

That was before he had it altered to Hawaiian style.

Fantastic. What a brilliant photo. So nice to see him with his guitar.

What's interesting is that it's an American guitar, from Chicago.

And they are beautiful.

This, to me, is a piece of furniture, not just an instrument.

You can probably tell how passionate I am about old guitars. Yeah.

I've owned a few in my time. I do love to be able to play them.

I think it's an absolute beauty.

I'd love to own it, but to own it

I'd have to pay ?1,000.

Gosh!

It's a real beauty. And they're very collectable in America. Wow.

I'm overwhelmed. Good.

For hours and hours on every Roadshow day, I get swamped

with Swiss and American watches, so it's absolutely delightful to see

a good-quality British watch.

Oh, right. And I use the word British

because I want you to tell me where you think it's come from.

I have no idea. My father inherited it.

He used to bring it out every now and then and say,

"This is the family coat of arms."

And I believe a cousin had a seal with the same coat of arms.

OK, because we have here, obviously, the crest and the armorial

and then, south of the border, we have the motto there,

but the motto on top of the crest

is very much a Scottish thing, rather than English or Welsh.

We do have a family tree going right back,

but I didn't know that any of them are Scottish.

OK. Now, it's got an extra hand. Right.

Do you know what that hand does? No! I don't, I'm afraid.

It is an alarm hand. Right.

So this very, very unusual pendant,

I'll demonstrate later,

but you can move that round and that moves the alarm hand round.

Right. Now this is an early watch

and it's a very early watch to have an alarm. Oh, right.

So you've obviously never used it, never really looked at it.

No, it's been locked away.

My father had it locked in a cupboard and we've had it locked in a safe.

Well, first thing is the hallmark,

which is London, 1809.

Right. So just over 200 years old.

OK. The case maker's mark up there is LC, which is Louis Comtesse.

If you've opened the back recently

you will know that there are two winding squares. Yes.

The bottom one with the serpent is for the actual watch movement. Yes.

But up here we have what looks like some sort of cavalry officer

on a horse and he's blowing a horn.

Right. And that horn, basically,

is the clue that that is where you wind the alarm. Right.

The other very intriguing thing, it says Patent 101. Yes.

And I can shed, at the moment,

no light on that. That needs further research. OK.

But I can tell you there is a watch very similar to this

in a very, very well-known book on pocket watches

that is five years later than this

and it is signed by Viner of London.

Right. Who was an exceptionally fine clock and watchmaker.

Let us see if it's signed on the inside.

This is the cuvette, which we lift up.

There is no signature at all, but again Patent 101

on the balance cock there.

It will be a duplex escapement.

Top-grade London movement.

Unsigned, which I just find very, very intriguing. Yes.

To have an alarm watch like this of that age is very, very unusual.

I'll just show you how you move it. You get this and you rotate it.

Right. And it moves round. Now the alarm would go off at 6.30.

If it worked.

Super watch in the hand, good size, cracking good weight.

I really hope I'm going to surprise you on the price.

It's five years earlier than the only other one.

It's not signed, but it's got the patent number on it.

Collectors will die for it.

I'm going to start off

at about ?7,000. Right.

And it wouldn't surprise me at all with the extra research

if we double that figure. Wow!

OK! It's going back in the safe!

What a shame! It is!

I started cantering down the winning straight,

so where better to end than the winner's enclosure?

It's the only chance I'm ever going to get to stand here.

Thank you to the people of Monmouthshire.

From the whole Roadshow team, from Chepstow,

until next time, bye-bye.

It's Biscuit Week.

Must try not to drop them.

It's going to be messy.

First batch in...

# It's so important