Antiques Roadshow: Rare Rings Appraisal Guide (2000-2009) | BBC

[00:00:00]good Heavens I wear it quite a lot I've collected jurry since I was about eight I started at jumble sales worked up to um junk shops and then one or two auctions what really drives you to buy this the beauty of and the color of stones and the fact that they have to go through so much effort to get the stones where they are yes exactly the fascination that we have for these things is because they're things of natural beauty I mean this is this is a Star Sapphire isn't it and um and do you know how the star is achieved in the sapphire I believe it's a fault in the stone it's a sort of a fault in the stone it's rather like the sheen on silk and the two strands of silk cross one another and as the light falls onto it it's separated and turned into a star it's a sort of grayish sapphire in a way isn't it but a very very pleasing one and I think the thing about precious stones is and the Deep Fascination for mankind is they're completely unchanging aren't they and we know perfectly well that it's us that are the ephemeral things on this table this is sand and sugar isn't it the sand is the simulated jewelry and the sugar the sweetest of all is the diamonds and the emeralds and The Sapphires and the rubies and and here are three delicious grains of sugar aren't there yes and this scintillation this return of light is really quite inimitable isn't it and and one does simply recognize it but here is um something that looks for all the world it appears to be an emerald bead necklace with um an emerald cut emerald in the center clasp but it isn't is it no I would think it's synthetic it's one made in a fern it's not by God what do you feel about that do you think there is a difference between a man-made one and a a natural one well there obviously is from the point of view that nature made the original but that has its own Beauty and it's quite a nice Stone to wear which is your favorite my favorite that one that one let's have a close look at that the sapphire and diamond ring the finest color of sapphire is is a cornflower blue a cashmere Sapphire with amazing velvety visual texture which actually isn't in this one necessarily because had it been so it would have been worth 30 40,000 and more and so a Nuance of color makes all the difference to Value it reminds me of a Summer Sky yes well I think that's completely poetic and marvelous I don't really know how to value your collection I think the the the simulated gems which you're obviously fond of are valued no more than 10 or 15 pounds and then mixed in here is it is it is a valuable ring without doubt a three stone diamond ring with what looked to be perfectly pure and nice nice stones and I suppose you know conservatively that must be sort of6 or 7,000 and more mustn't it yes I think so yeah so a collection measured in tens of thousands of pounds and tens of pounds and it's all jewelry it all lives under the same name and it giv you pleasure thank you thank you I had it for my 21st birthday for my grandfather So Family ring Going Back The Years Generations back 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 is like a box a pretty garet in the middle there isn't it that purpley color garet looks a bit like a ruby but I think looking at this purple color it's going to be a garnet in a surround of tiny diamonds that form um almost like a star and then we've got enamel which 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 color yeah um so that combination of stones and color was often used in Victorian jewelry yes 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 yes 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 um what date do you think it is well 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 very pretty jewelry I have to say I mean it sounds like slightly odd thing to say but jewelry of that period was very feminine I think it's very very salable 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 I think they don't have sparkle don't they when you see like look at that anyway anyway I'm sorry but tell me a bit more about the background of them well these Rings belong 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 don't know I 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 um 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 gray dull Blobby looking centers to them the reason is is that they are a much more simple cups 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 cup the value of it is considerably lower than it is uh for the 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 oh this one um is a brilliant cut diamond that weighs around about 1.8 karat 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 floor at the side and with these Stones they're valued according to how few the floors 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 color and a bit flawed this one is quite severely flawed so it's probably worth in auction around about maybe,00,500 yeah good heavens and I would ensure it for maybe around you know £3,000 possibly as a retail price tell me where's this ring come from um my nan gave it to me and I don't know anything else about it I don't think she wore it very much it's in fantastic condition isn't it and look at it scintillating in the sun yes it's wonderful wonderful thing what date do you think it is you don't know no it's made in about 1840 and the point about it is the design it's in the form of a Forget Me Not flower and in the language of flowers the Forget Me Not stands for true love and the Ruby is for for passion and the diamonds are forever so it's true love with enduring passion you can't ask for more can you absolutely not and it's the sort of ring that any ring collector would be mad to get their hands on really yeah absolutely mad cuz the condition is is wonderful it's very poetic it's truly exciting concentrated little Jewel from the 19th century and I think that it should should be insured for £1,250 good Lord happy I am veryy love to price beautiful isn't it then it is beautiful enjoy wearing it very much brilliant my grandmother handed it down to me when she passed away a few years ago at the age of 102 goodness gracious me so well now look at that she left all this look at that for for me as well because here we have a veritable cabinet of cure I ities it's a an extraordinary collection of Georgian and Victorian jewelry let's have a look at this one first because this does catch my eye and this is a Georgian gold Belta link chain and typically it's got a hand clasp terminating at the bottom on the finger of the clasp is this little gem set ring it's a beautiful little piece um there's another gold chain made out of Spun gold I mean considering it was probably made in about 1825 1830 you can see the technique the sophistication that that would have been made um then there's some really delightful morning Rings now the thing about morning Rings is of course when um when someone died um it was customary to commemorate the person by mounting a small lock of hair in a locket Center surrounding it quite frequently with half pearls being morning the color was black always is going to be black and then at the back of the Ring we might find an small sort of Engraving of the person's name the date that they passed on and then also you might find a tiny little locket compartment where there would be a small lock of hair do you wear them at all I have actually worn this little one um Sean and I got married in Winchester guildo last year in a dressed up a medieval costume and I did actually wear that and that was the actual ring that you wore I did wear that one yeah let's just have a look at that one then because it's quite a simple ring really it's a late Victorian gold ring with a sapphire in the middle surrounded by a sort of um posy of half pears so I assume then that apart from knowing it's come down the family you've never actually had it valued before no well I think on the basis that a Georgian gold muff chain like this is a little shorter than the very long ones that you get that by itself is probably worth something around £1,000 don't um this fine mesh tubular chain necklace that's probably worth around about 600 to 800 um the Rings you've got the half hoot ring there lovely diamonds five graduated Stones that's worth about £800 to £1,000 the morning rings are worth between 3 and 400 each so from what looks like a fairly sort of um straight Sheffield plate set which is worth um maybe no more than around about 300 you've got a lower tiar drawer which is probably worth £8,000 god well didn't realize that at all it really is a unique collection goodness me I inherited it from my aunt who um whose husband gave it to my aunt during their marriage but I don't know the history on it apart from that it's an interesting uh cluster ring when I first saw it I thought to myself it's going to be something like a topaz or one of these Brown Stones sometimes you get things like brown sapphires it's a diamond in the center and on this side we have a another one in white but the thing about this ring that's most interesting is this one because this is a Bluey green one all diamond set but all different colors and uh from my point of view seeing colored diamonds well it always is very exciting because color diamonds are extremely rare this one is almost a sort of yellowish brown color but this one is the one that's quite exciting because one of the rarest colors that you can find are blue and even rarer is the color green the surrounding line of diamonds around the three principal Stones is a different period from the three Center Stones I think it's certainly Victorian this cluster with this type of silver setting this niin setting here but when we look at the three principal diamonds we see that they're all Claw set Stones the diamonds themselves are cushion shape Victorian cut stones and I think they were probably cut in maybe around about 1900 or 1905 at the very latest as far as trying to Value fancy diamonds is concerned it is very very difficult there are so many subtle nuances of color you get grayish blue bluish gray greenish blue bluish green and what you have to do with them is to send them off to a laboratory where they will actually issue a certificate stating exactly what the color is let's suppose that it comes back as being a natural fancy green blue diamond or blue green diamond and that they can say say it with certainty in which case I'm going to be very broad with my pricing here and say hopefully at least 2 and 1 half to £3,000 but it could very very well be worth £5,000 with all the right gradings oh that's very good news thank you well this is a tiny tiny little ring isn't it what what pred you to bring it to us today well cuz I I believe it's valuable did you why what you think it says Lite inside well it does doesn't it yes and tell me what you know about leite well I know they did uh French French yes and they do a lot Pottery as well yes glass L well that's where we realized it could be valuable well I mean it's it's not only um a rare thing but uh it's a very beautiful thing isn't it and and tell me who gave it to you uh Old Gentleman who Liv next door uh We've it was on his own left on his own and we looked after him and on it was 94 years old and did he know about what I don't really know know it was after died I don't think he realized the of but what has to be said is that this is a complete little Masterpiece of Goldsmith's work and it has to be said too that it's made by one of the Towering Geniuses of the anuo movement Rene laik and he just happens to be a genius who chose to work in jewelry and then moved on into glass and this is a tiny expression of his work but it's all there now tell me what what do you think about this green material I don't know is it enamel it is enamel it's a very particular sort of enamel which we call P enamel which means applied to the day which is another way of saying that this is a enamel without a background and the point about laik is that he was returning to nature this is his inspiration comes from plant life and from animal life and in order to achieve that he used what was actually a Japanese technique in um suggesting the the veins in leaves and the veins in the wings of buzzing insects with with pierced gold and then he'd hold the enamel in suspension like a bubble and it gives a little bit of um naturalism or more than a little bit of naturalism now the reason it's tiny of course is that it's a ring so this is not marks against it in any way at all actually that it is a tiny tiny little work of art people collect these things and if it turned up in a sale two collectors wanting it very badly I think maybe 5,000 maybe 6,000 wouldn't be wouldn't be completely mad it was my great-grandfather's so how long how long ago would that be maybe 1910 but we don't really know when he would have when he would have had it but we think maybe around that date and it's just been past down through the family and it now belongs to my brother mhm and do you have any idea where it originated from um we've just been told that it's a Brazilian yellow diamond and apart from that we don't know a thing well it's actually interesting you should say that it's Brazilian because nowadays most people associate diamonds with Southern Africa but in fact diamonds were originally found in India and all the diamond mines worked out about 1725 and then very conveniently around the same time they found them in Brazil and the Brazilian mines went on until they found diamonds in South Africa which was not till pretty late in the 19th century so it's very likely that this diamond did actually originate from Brazil and did they specifically find yellow diamonds in Brazil well they find white white yellow all colors because they after um after white diamonds there's the range goes from yellow to Brown and this is actually quite a quite a good color yellow it's not a really really strong fancy intense yellow also The Cutting is quite interesting because it's a it's a 19th century cut you'll say it's not round like most modern cut diamonds it's it's more what's called cushion Shape TV screen shape I think and also if you look through the stone you'll see that there's a slice off the bottom it and that's something you don't get in a modern Diamond either so do you think it's always been a ring no I don't think it's always been a ring because actually the stone is much older than the setting and with diamonds they tend to get unset and reset and unset and reset and it happens all the time so what kind of date is the setting well the setting probably dates from around 1910 because it's platinum and platinum is a great material for mounting jewelry because it's very very hard but they hardly use it at all because it's very difficult to Sol order until around 1900 when they improve their technology it's quite a big Stone I got uh I got a little Gadget here that um sort of very roughly measures the size of diamonds but it only goes up to 2 and 1/2 carats and uh 2 and 1/2 Kats goes nowhere near that and also these stones are quite heavy because they cut the much deeper than Modern Stones M so I think that the stone probably weighs some between four and five carats it's quite a quite sizable so you don't actually have this inured or anything doesn't um it's on the the household contents insurance so you get £500 with it St something like that if it was a really really strong yellow color it' be worth a huge amount of money but even with this Pleasant yellow color M weighing between four and 5 carats this has got to be insured for well at at least £1,000 anything between 12 and 15,000 I would say quite a lot it's really it's really a super rig my grandfather bought them for for my grandmother over the years and I think he must have bought them in London um it's very tricky with Jade issues with Jade you have to bear in mind are color uniformity of color through the stone shape of the Stone size of course patiner if you get a piece of Jade that's very scratched and you get one that's very smooth and perfect it's considerably more valuable for being a perfect Stone than one that might have a few abrasions on it but you know when we when we look at these two that's a piece of Jade it's fabulous isn't it yeah now as far as the age is concern the diamond setting is very 1925 so I would suggest that that's the period for the ring itself um I ought to add one little caveat which is these days Jade is improved they impregnate they do all sorts of things to make them look slightly better than they are the good news is though it's unlikely with a stone of that date this one here have you noticed it's got a slightly slightly wedge wedge shape it's almost as if it's been polished slightly off and that does affect the in a little yeah then you've got this Splendid Deco Jade bro where I think they must have taken a couple of pieces of Chinese jade that have been carved set them in little settings of diamonds this flash it's almost like a geometric bow and then you've got these calib black little he stones in between and this color combination the black the white the green was very Deco yeah now let me just have a look at these J pieces cuz these are a fantastic color aren't they these are Wonder ful ah now one small anxiety I've got and I I'm sure well I'm sure you have noticed it it's got a crack running all the way through it in fact the mount's been made to uh hold it because it's got more claws on that side and they're very thin slices aren't they these are the sort of things that would have been done in China and you know you could wear them as clips for the ears or something but these have been made into a brooch and then finally you've got this terrific terrific Chinese jade carving which by its quality I mean look at the det little birds the piercing and what sort of a flower is that well they usually think Lotus flap they're usually lotus flowers and you'd have all sorts of symbols and is this a p you know a pod the P pod is there but what a fantastic thick slab of Imperial Jade well that really is a staggering collection that you brought in moving on to the question of values it's not easy if that wasn't damaged it would be enormously commercial but the damage does affect the price I I think that in that condition with the crack across it my instinct is that this is probably worth something around £4,000 um yes this one here um with the wedge yeah you know I love the Polish it's on a 1925 bar with the diamonds on the shoulders that one there I think it has to be worth the same sort of money this one here I think is the most beautiful carving it reminds me of one that I saw some years ago that was very similar that I know in auction fetch something like6 to 8,000 really gosh uh then we move on to this one and this one I would want to do a little bit of work on it just to be absolutely sure on this one but I think I think this is probably £8 or 10,000 I wear it quite a lot well I just think I just think it's got so much going for the size the shap isn't it what a fantastic group of things fantastic which my grandfather could hear you say that cuz he obviously Ador I'm absolutely thrilled many thanks thank you thank you