BBC Antiques Roadshow guest speechless as 'piece of tat' worth thousands of pounds

An Antiques Roadshow guest was left shocked when a 'piece of tat' was given a value of thousands of pounds.

A husband and wife appeared on the BBC show, where they sought advice about two pieces of jewellery. One of them was dubbed a 'piece of tat' by her husband but the lady loved the piece and wanted to keep it.

She explained to expert Susan: "They were from my husband's side - from his mother - and when she died, my husband said his mum had a lovely opal bracelet that I might like. So we dug it out and that was that.

"In this big box was loads of stuff and we got to the bottom and found that. My husband said, 'you don't want that - it's a load of tat'. It's just a piece of glass. So I was like, 'well I like it.'"

The man added: "We'd like to know what it is! It's very big for a precious stone, I would have thought."

Susan then went on to explain how special and valuable the piece was. She shared: "Let's start with the bangle first. We know it's opal like you said, but it's really beautiful. As we can see, there are these wonderful opals, all graduating in size, and have diamonds in between, which really help to bring out the beautiful colours.

"The greens, the blues, flashes of oranges we see around the stones. It really is totally magnificent and the added bonus with any piece of jewellery is having the original box which we have here. If we open the box up, we can see the piece was bought at Wartski's in Llandudno. It's now based in London but this is where they were established. They've gone on to be one of the most important jewellers in the world, known for selling Fabergé but we can calm things a bit because this isn't Fabergé, but it really is a super example of 1880s jewellery."

Explaining about the necklace, she added: "Then we come on to the piece of tat that you would call it. This comes from the Edwardian period and has diamonds which are set at the top here. They are set in platinum to the front. You need strength to support this jewel here. It's actually aquamarine. The colour's even all the way through the stone aswell."

It was then she revealed exactly how much it would sell for.

Susan said: "All in all, it's moved a long way from tat! The aquamarine pendant, if it went up to auction, would be around three to £5000. The opal bangle, of course, is a magnificent piece and if that came up to auction, we would be looking at an estimate of eight to £10,000," with the man remarking: "I wasn't expecting that! I think we better have another look in that jewellery box."

Antiques Roadshow airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer