Rare Jewellery Discoveries Worth Thousands With John Benjamin | Antiques Roadshow UK

Buyers would be very excited to see one like this. £100, yeah. Good heavens. That's a lot of money. Well, it's fantastic. Very exciting. They don't half sparkle, don't they? When you see it, like, look at that. Anyway, anyway, I'm sorry. But tell me a bit more about the background of them. Well, these rings belonged to my mother. And when she died, they came to me. Did she tell you where they come from at all? Any family background or anything? I don't know the history of them at all, no. I don't know. Because in many ways, they're all different periods. This is a very typical band ring, probably made in about the 1970s. Look at the diamonds, because I don't know if you can see that they have rather grey, dull, blobby-looking centres to them. The reason is, is that they are a much more simple cut. They're called single-cut diamonds. And they lack the luster of the far more complicated brilliant-cut diamonds. Now, this is a brilliant-cut diamond. And I think you can see the intense sparkle of that stone in comparison with these stones. So there's another feature. When you get a diamond that's a single cut, the value of it is considerably lower than it is for the full brilliant cut. So this 1970s gold band ring with straightforward single-cut stones, if I was selling this in auction, I might expect to get, I don't know, maybe around about £300 for it. This one is a brilliant-cut diamond that weighs around about 1.8 carats. It's a nice, bright, brilliant-cut stone in a very pretty, fussy and quite complicated setting of platinum and gold. But the problem is with this stone, when I look at it through my lens, I can see that it's severely hampered by having a very nasty flaw at the side. And with these stones, they're valued according to how few the flaws are and how white the stone is. So if a diamond is white and completely clean, it's far more valuable than a stone that's a bit off colour and a bit flawed. This one is quite severely flawed. So it's probably worth in auction around about maybe £1,400, £1,500. Yeah. Good heavens. And I would insure it for maybe around £3,000 possibly as a retail price. I think when you first look at this plaque, you think it's a piece of costume jewellery because of its shape and style. Is that something that you thought of? Well, I was 15 when I got it. It came in a rather untidy box just of bits and bobs from my auntie. I just liked it, so I kept it safe and occasionally wore it. I think it's good that you kept it safe because it does have a value and it's quite a piece that you could date quite precisely because of its design and style. Now, first of all, this material that looks a bit like a cloud formation or a snail shell, which you might think is just glass, is actually rock crystal. So it's a natural crystal form. This flash of colour in the centre is actually a line of fine Burmese rubies. And then the white stones on the borders of the rubies are, of course, lovely diamonds. So you've got a complete mixture of precious stones in a natural-looking hearthstone rock crystal border. Now, its shape is a bit peculiar because it doesn't look very much like, well, would you wear it as a brooch? Would you wear it? How would you wear it? And then you turn it round and the explanation is there because it is a lapel clip. You've probably seen that just there, above that little space, there is a word. Have you ever seen that word before? I've looked at it and it says Chaumet. Chaumet, exactly, because Chaumet were a firm of manufacturers making jewellery, particularly very fine pieces in the 30s. And they used to make jewellery that had a tremendously pronounced style. Now, the firm itself actually goes back way into about 200 years old, something like that. And they were patronised by Napoleon and they go back a long way. And some of their jewellery makes a great deal of money. This clip, although it's a fairly modest piece, really, it's not got a big flash of diamonds, not big chunky stones. But because of its singularity, the fact that it's signed Chaumet, and smothered all over the bottom of this clip are the little French control marks. So it's got all the right things there. What is the metal? Platinum. It's not white gold, it would be platinum. The Burmese rubies in the centre and the quality of the brilliance flanking the rubies themselves do make it quite valuable. So I think if it was sold in an auction, we're looking at something in the realms of £2,000 for it. I bought it in a local auction rooms just a few weeks ago. Local to North Wales, yes. How much did you pay? £120. Well, certainly when I saw the name Franklin, Duke Street, St James's, London, very good name indeed. It's a sautoir, this is what they're called. Sautoir. And it would have been worn as a long necklace around the neck and the ends of it would literally extend down right the way to the waist. And they were very popular from about 1895 particularly through to around about 1905. They're real pearls. So you've got a woven line, a sort of plaited spiralled line of real pearls. Look at the diamonds because that's what they are in these caps. You've got these finials, these sort of terminal points here. They look like little caps but each of the lines are set in silver with tiny diamonds, rose-cut diamonds. Rose-cut ones, right. And then each of these sort of terminals suspends at the bottom a series of rubies. They're all set in gold. Yes. Alternating with little cubes. That's right. And each of the cubes is individually set with more tiny diamonds. Diamonds, right. And then suspended at the end of the last ruby is yet another tassel terminal with more diamonds in the cap, all silver set by the way. Yes. And then a series of real pearl fringe drops. But the staggering thing about all this is that you've managed to acquire a fairly important piece of jewellery for £120. Yes. Because I think that if one was selling this it would probably make £3,000. Oh my goodness me. That's a lot of money. I had it for my 21st birthday for my grandfather. So family ring going back the years? Probably only to the beginning of the 1900s when it belonged to my step-grandfather. Well it's almost got the head of the ring, it's like a box. A pretty garnet in the middle there, isn't it? That purply colour garnet. Looks a bit like a ruby but I think looking at this purple colour it's going to be a garnet in a surround of tiny diamonds that form almost like a star. And then we've got enamel which I must say when I first thought I saw that I thought I thought that they were turquoise but they're not. It's that sky blue colour. So that combination of stones and colour was often used in Victorian jewellery. But there's something interesting about this ring isn't there? There is. Because the whole thing is like a concertina and there instead of just having a ring... It's a bracelet. It's a lady's bracelet. So I mean it's beautiful as a ring but as a bracelet it is a dimension that is just fantastic really. And they used to do this in the Victorian period. What date do you think it is? I think it's probably early Victorian about 1840. 1845, 1850 would be about the latest I would put on it and it's very much 1840. It's very pretty jewellery I have to say. I mean it sounds a slightly odd thing to say but jewellery of that period was very feminine. I think it's very very saleable indeed. I know you're not going to sell such a ring because of course it's a family ring but I think such a ring like that because of its feature that you can do so many different things with it means that buyers would be very excited to see one like this. And I think in auction £1,000 to £1,500 for it I would think. Now I think it's true to say that this sort of little ring with a little stone would pass a lot of people by. What do you know about it? Only that it belongs to my mother-in-law that's all and she came by it by her mother-in-law which was my late husband's grandmother. So we're looking at what around about 1900 that type of period? It must be I just don't know. Because in fact what it is it's a typical late Victorian type of setting. You've got a gold ring which is gypsy set with a stone. Plain gold broad trumpet front to it typically the sort of thing that you would see in around about the late Victorian period. Now the blue stone is in fact a diamond and that makes it very special indeed. It's a blue diamond. To see a blue diamond of this kind of colour is extremely rare and in fact perhaps one sees one per year or two years they are that rare. I think a lot of people assume that they come in white but they also come in lots of fancy colours as well of which green and blue and pink are probably the rarest colour to find. Because it's a Victorian stone it means that all the weight of the stone is at the back of the stone. So in fact the weight of the diamond probably weighs about 0.4 of 1. So it's approaching half a carat in size. So what are we going to do with it? How do we assess the price of something like this? Because of course it is a specimen stone. There are so many variables that would apply to something like this. What we would have to do is to take the stone out and send it across to the United States for certification. Because unfortunately it's only in the United States that fancy diamonds like this get a certificate that purchasers have sufficient confidence in. Just to give you a suggestion of exactly how many levels of blue there are. Fancy grey blue, fancy intense blue, fancy intense green blue, fancy blue, fancy greyish blue, fancy grey blue, fancy light greyish blue. All these are different subtle nuances on blue. Now I think that's a smashing colour. I think that's a beautiful depth of colour. And I personally haven't seen an old Victorian stone with that depth of colour. So looking at a kind of a precedent that's been set. A diamond that was a round brilliant cut, that is a more modern cut stone, that weighed a third of a carat, 0.32. Remembering I'm assessing this at around about 0.4 to 0.45. Was sent to the United States for certification. It was subsequently put into a sale in New York. And in 1996 it made, believe it or not, US 42,000. Good God. That's 132,000 a carat. Now it would be very dangerous indeed to sit here and say that that diamond is going to be worth that kind of money. You're going to say to me, well, all right, what is it worth potentially? All I can say is that it ought to be worth say between £10,000 and £25,000. Is that a shock? It's a lot more than I thought. I'm sure it is. It's the most extraordinary find. And you know, it's thrilling. One doesn't see these things. So to see one bought in on a roadshow, well, it's fantastic. Very exciting.