The Roadshow brings together a team of the country’s leading authorities on arts and antiques to offer free valuations for your family heirlooms or car boot bargains.
Each Roadshow event attracts around 4,000 people, who come along to find out if they might own a missing masterpiece and find out the priceless history of their items. Whether it’s a £100,000 painting or a £5 cup and saucer, everyone gets an expert opinion on their treasure.
Around 15,000 items are valued at each show by Roadshow experts from which around 60 are filmed for inclusion in the two shows made at each location.
Last year the specialists discovered unseen masterpieces by Mexican artist Diego Rivera worth £100,000, jewels from the Titanic and a unique Brooklyn Dodgers baseball with a value as extraordinary as its story.
Fascinating stories
Antiques Roadshow is one of the BBC’s most popular factual programmes and around six million people regularly watch on Sunday evenings.
Fiona Bruce has presented the show for the past 12 years: "So much of what you see on the Antiques Roadshow is about the story of an object and its owner as much as about its value. We are never short of people bringing along items that tell a hell of a story, which can be very exciting, poignant or funny, sometimes, all three. Or it can tell us something about ourselves.
“Even after all these years people still have the most amazing things tucked away in their attics and garages and I can’t wait to see what they pull out of their bags and trolleys in 2019."
Some of the most fascinating finds to come to light over the years include wristwatch owned by Lawrence of Arabia, which went on to sell for £34,000, a chest eventually proven to have belonged to Queen Anne and a leather jacket worn by John F Kennedy and valued at up to £300,000.
Many objects featured on the Roadshow have been found in strange places such as diamond jewels found sewn into an upholstered chair and two important painting discovered by the new owners of a house in their loft.
