BBC's Antiques Roadshow heartbreak for guest told £250,000 statue is worth just £150

dailyrecord.co.uk:

This is the moment a guest on BBC One's Antiques Roadshow was left heartbroken after being told a statue - thought to be worth £250,000 - was actually only worth just £150.

The news was broken to the owner when antique expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan gave his verdict on a figure from the Kota tribe from Gabon, south of Nigeria, which was brought in by a member of the public, reports The Mirror.The expert was initially very excited at seeing the antique.

He said: "When you unwrapped this, my heart really skipped a beat because it's one of my favourite tribal African figures."The guest told Ronnie he bought the figure ten years ago at an Antiques Roadshow event in Cambridge.He said: "It was right among the junk and it cost me the grand total of £1.50.”Ronnie joked: "You really took a risk, didn't you?" The guest said: "Well, I was intrigued by the fact that it looked as if somebody had put a lot of work into making it.The antiquarian told how the figure appeared to be from the Kota tribe from Gabon.He said: "This is a Kota reliquary guardian figure and they put these on the bones of their ancestors to protect them and they polished this metal."And in the 19th century, they were brass and copper, this is just copper, the brass and copper were like gold to them.

They're so highly revered in the art world that they have one of these in the Metropolitan Museum in New York."They're such iconic examples of African tribal art.