TOP 5 Most EXPENSIVE JADES Items Ever Appraised On Antiques Roadshow!

From a looted Chinese tomb to the Great Qing Dynasty, jade has traveled across centuries, empires, and continents to end up in some of the most astonishing appraisals in Antiques Roadshow history. In this video today, we will talk about the top five most expensive, breathtaking jade items ever appeared on Antiques Roadshow. My father was in China two different times, I think in the late 30s and sometime during the 40s with the army and he was a liaison of some sort. He was just a Kentucky farm boy, but he learned Chinese and he met Mr. Liang at number 10 Jade Street and that's pretty much what I remember him always telling me. Mr. Liang would call him and say, John, I have some pieces you might want to look at. Four separate jade pieces, all dating to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty between 1735 and 1796, a golden age for Chinese jade carving when the Qianlong Emperor himself was known as one of history's most obsessive collectors and patrons of jade artistry. The first piece is a delicate bowl carved in what's known as mogul style, a design tradition borrowed from Indian craftsmanship, prized for its impossibly thin walls and razor crisp carving, a technique that required extraordinary skill since even the slightest mistake could shatter the entire piece. The second is a similar mogul style vase, only slightly more ornate, a small carving topped with a genuine ruby. The third piece takes a different turn entirely, depicting a mythical creature called a Bixi. In Chinese folklore, the Bixi was believed to ward off evil spirits and bring good fortune. This particular Bixi is carved from Celadon Jade, a soft, pale green variety long associated with purity and refinement in Chinese culture. But the true showstopper is the fourth piece, a jade bowl bearing something incredibly rare, an imperial inscription reading, By Imperial Order, rather than simply made. That distinction meant this bowl was crafted specifically for the emperor himself. A conservative auction estimate on that bowl would be $30,000 to $50,000. No, oh my gosh. A conservative estimate on this vase here would be $80,000 to $120,000. Oh, I love this one. This animal here, beautifully carved, wonderful quality, would be $200,000 to $300,000. I can't believe you. And this bowl here, because of the imperial inscription, this would be probably very, very conservatively $400,000 to $600,000. Oh, I don't believe you. Oh my gosh. For a total amount of between $710,000 to $1,070,000. Damn. This appraisal dates back to 2009, and remarkably, even by 2025, that valuation has held steady. Okay, now let's move to our next jade piece, which comes with a mystery that even the experts got wrong at first. I brought two jade tablets and a jade seal that belonged to my great-great-grandmother in California. She died in 1929. At that point, my mother inherited them. I have been told they are 18th century from China. According to my mother, she may have purchased them in San Francisco, where she lived. This collection includes two jade plaques and a jade seal, all carved from mottled green jade, a variety prized in imperial China for its rich, cloud-like coloring, which was often seen as a mark of natural beauty that couldn't be replicated by even the finest craftsmen. The two plaques are believed to have come from a jade-paged book, a rare and unusual format where individual jade pages were bound together like a traditional book, rather than written on paper or silk. Each plaque is incised with official script, and experts believe these particular pages were commemorative in nature, likely created to honor a specific ancestor as part of a larger imperial memorial tradition. The seal itself is carved in a square form and topped with a double dragon motif, a design almost exclusively reserved for imperial and court seals throughout Chinese history. Now, most of you are probably wondering what these imperial seals were even used for. Here's the quick explanation. In China, a seal wasn't just a decorative object, it functioned like an official signature, but far more powerful. Documents, decrees, and artwork weren't considered valid without the correct seal stamped onto them. And, unlike a written signature, a seal's carved design was extremely difficult to forge. The emperor personally owned dozens of different seals, each reserved for specific purposes, state affairs, private letters, or even stamping his approval directly onto paintings he admired. Jade was chosen specifically for imperial seals because ordinary citizens weren't permitted to use it that way, making it an instant visual marker of imperial or noble status. And dragons, like the ones carved into this seal, were the exclusive symbol of the emperor himself. Here's where it gets genuinely interesting. For generations, the family believed these pieces dated back to the 18th century. But a closer inspection of the inscription revealed something unexpected. A specific reign date reading the first year of Guangxu, which translates to 1875, nearly a full century later than anyone had assumed. Adding to the mystery, subtle weaknesses in the carving, slightly less crisp detailing around the seal's cloud motifs, along with a few minor miscarvings in the script, pointed to a later, less lavishly funded imperial workshop. Together, as a associated pair, they would carry an auction estimate of twenty to thirty thousand. Okay. Wow. Do you have any idea of value on the seal? My mother had it appraised at the same time in 2007, and the seal appraised for fourteen hundred dollars also. Conservatively, at auction, it would carry an auction estimate of thirty to fifty thousand. Okay. All right. And I think our takeaway was, if there can be a shared consensus within the industry, among peers, that it is 1875 to the end of Guangxu reign, that it may be a multiple of ten. So it may carry an auction estimate of three hundred to five hundred thousand. Oh, is that all? Okay. Well, that's a little bit different than what I was expecting today, but oh my. Oh my. Thank you. That's amazing. Okay, now let's move to our next jade piece, which hides a secret dark enough to involve a tomb. This was given to me as a gift at the age of ten, and I won't say how long that was ago. I'm not going to ask. It was purchased in New York at Parc Benet Galleries. I was told that the jade pieces came from a ceremonial belt, Chinese, and probably came into this country in the mid to late 19th century. The piece was commissioned to incorporate these pieces of jade at the Edward Farmer Studio in New York. The white jade panels covering this box actually came from a Chinese ceremonial belt. And if you look closely, you can tell because the panels on opposite sides match each other perfectly, just as they would have on the original belt, worn as a symbol of rank and status by Chinese officials and nobility. The style, coloring, and carving technique all point to workmanship from the 16th century, but here's where the story takes a darker turn. Experts believe these panels likely came out of a tomb, quite possibly removed during the chaos of the Boxer Rebellion in the early 1900s. A violent anti-foreign uprising in China, during which countless historical artifacts, including tomb goods, were looted and smuggled out of the country amid the unrest, decades later those same ancient jade panels ended up in the hands of Edward Farmer, a major New York City designer, decorator, and goldsmith, who ran his studio out of the famous Carlisle Hotel from the 1920s through the 1940s. Farmer worked in a style very similar to Cartier at the time, taking sleek European box and jewelry shapes and inlaying them with rare Asian materials like jade, lacquer, and hardstone, a design trend that was hugely fashionable among wealthy American and European collectors during that era. Most Edward Farmer pieces that surface at auction today sell in a fairly modest $1,000 to $5,000 range, but this particular box breaks that pattern entirely. It's stamped 18 karat gold, a rarity for his work, and it also incorporates genuine antique mandarin beads salvaged from a separate necklace. This is worth, I would say, between $80,000 and $125,000. That's a lot of money. Yes, it is. I was in college in New York City in 1965-66, and went home for Thanksgiving vacation. My birthday usually falls on Thanksgiving vacation, and a very good friend of mine, who was an antiques dealer in Baltimore, called me up and said that he had a piece that he'd just gotten from an estate that he thought that I should have. So I went and looked at it and fell in love with it instantly. I asked him what the price was, and he told me, and I said, oh, well, I can't afford that. And he said, well, go home and ask your mother to give it to you for your birthday. So I did, and she said, oh, well, that was way too much. And I said, well, how about birthday and Christmas? She gave it to me for my birthday and Christmas combined. She paid $350. This is a Chinese censer carved entirely from a single piece of even white-colored jade, no separate parts added or joined. Its handles feature loose articulated rings, a notoriously difficult carving technique to pull off without breaking the stone, alongside a butterfly-shaped handle and relief-carved lotus vines wrapping around the sides. At first glance, the craftsmanship resembles 18th-century Qianlong period work, but subtle details in the carving, slightly less refined finishing on the leaf detailing, point instead to the early 20th century, made in that older imperial style rather than during it. In recent years, a wave of new buyers from mainland China has driven fresh demand specifically for pieces like this, even white-colored jade carved in this traditional 18th-century style. If you wanted to sell this at auction today, my sense is that it would be in the $50,000 to $80,000 range at auction, which is a pretty good price. Well, it's still a very nice birthday present. Oh, lord, yes. And I have to say, I don't know many people that have put $300 down and ended up with something like this. Okay, now let's move to our final jade piece. I bought it at auction in 1993 in Lexington. My husband and I both are interested in Asian things. I had the opportunity to buy it, and I thought it was a good price, and I didn't really know for sure what it was other than I thought it was probably some kind of jade. At first glance, this may look like an elaborate stone bowl, but it is actually a finely carved Chinese jade basin dating back roughly two centuries. Made from dark green nephrite, a type of jade often called spinach jade because of its deep green color, the basin is covered with an intricate profusion of lotus flowers, leaves, vines, and chrysanthemums. But these weren't simply decorative choices. In Chinese art, many of these motifs carried auspicious meanings with lotus, bats, and other elements associated with ideas such as good fortune, prosperity, and blessings. The basin is unusually shallow, recessed about three inches, revealing what it was originally designed for. Rather than sitting directly on a table, it would have been placed on a wooden stand and used as a basin with the elaborate exterior decoration still visible from the side. The carving was judged to be above average, and its style suggested that it was made in China during the Qing dynasty sometime around the late 18th or early 19th century. Even the natural imperfections in the stone tell part of the story. A visible fissure runs through the jade, representing a natural weakness in the material rather than a flaw created by the carver. There's another detail that shows just how carefully this basin was designed. The lotus scroll continues around the exterior, even though that portion would have been hidden when the basin was sitting in its wooden stand. It was still decorated because the sides remained visible to anyone looking at the object. The owner had been using this historic jade basin for flower arrangements, and there was even some candle wax nearby. The appraiser immediately warned her against exposing the jade to heat because the existing natural fissures could potentially worsen or cause the stone to crack. I would recommend an insurance figure for this of about $25,000. Oh my god. Okay. Okay. Wow. $25,000, maybe even $30,000. Whoa. Okay. Oh my gosh. That's what you'd be expected to pay if you went to an antique shop that dealt in Chinese art and bought this today. Really? Wow. That's amazing. But that's not where the story ends. As the value of exceptional Chinese jade continued to rise, the basin was reassessed years later. By 2018, its insurance value had climbed to approximately $75,000. And by 2020, it had risen again to an astonishing $125,000. And that wraps up our top five most expensive jade items ever appeared on Antiques Roadshow. We've got so many more incredible antique videos coming your way very soon. So make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a single one. Transcribed by https://otter.ai