An Antiques Roadshow guest was left stunned after being given a warning over the whopping valuation he received for his gold watch.
Expert Richard Price, Fiona Bruce and the rest of the team were at the Windermere Jetty Museum in the Lake District for a recently aired episode of the BBC show. The expert began: "Well a very, very beautiful, engraved watch on both sides so it's what we call a hunting case watch. If it's got a very beautiful dial as well, which it has, look at that lovely silver dial I can say pretty categorically that it is for the Spanish market."
Explaining the watch's origin, the guest said: "It was a gift by a Spanish lady, a friend to the family, one day she said, 'I got no one to leave it to. You have it." Richard replied: "Well, what a lucky couple you are. Absolutely typical for the Spanish market, beautiful dials, it's 18 karat gold, dating from the 1860s. Now, do you remember anything special about this watch when it was given to you?"
The guest revealed the previous owner "demonstrated there was a chime" but he wasn't entirely sure what the sound meant and whether the watch would be able to chime again. Richard continued: "Firstly, it's signed by a Swiss mechanical Lucien Dubois and it has three squares – one is to set the hands and then it has the normal waiting in the direction of the arrow and then it has a third winding square which will be for an independent seconds.
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"The top of this watch has a knurled pendant as if it was a keyless waiting watch but we know that it's key wound, so that serves another function. A very very clever horologist by the name of Joseph Barolos, who worked in London devised a form of quarter repeating, which means that the watch will strike the hours and the quarters, turning it to the left to do the hours, releasing it, and turning it to the right to do the quarters.
"That is not functioning and all that very complex repeat work will be under the dial and we cannot see if it's there. The very fact that you recall chiming in other words, some sort of repetition suggests to me almost certainly this watch had and might still have that work there."
The Antiques Roadshow expert went on to deliver a warning as he shared the valuation for the unusual piece. He explained that the true value of the item depended greatly on whether the watch's "quarter repeating" function was in tact.
Richard explained: "If this is Joseph Barolos' patent. We're talking about a very rare thing. If it's there, I'm going to quote you £7,000 to £10,000. If it's not, we'd be looking at £2,500 to £3,000 minimum right. So either way, lovely gift."
The stunned owner replied: "Oh yeah. And it's not for sale," before the expert joked: "That's what you all say."
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