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‘Antiques Roadshow’ Guest Left Speechless at the Value of His Books

By October 1, 2019October 4th, 2019News

Antiques Roadshow is a British television programme from the BBC where members of the public come to have strange and obscure antiques looked at and valued by professionals. In a recent episode, one guest was staggered to find that his collection of almost 200-year-old sailing books were worth thousands of pounds.

The episode saw antiques expert Justin Croft examining two sailing books nearly 200-years-old. “They are sailing books, this is the largest of the two and if we open it up we can see that it’s a log of the proceedings of HMS Britain and its captain Sir Murray Maxwell,” said Croft. “It wasn’t originally dated but it’s been penciled in at an early date, 1824.”

The guest explained that he’s inherited the books from his aunt and found them tucked away in her attic. “I found them absolutely fascinating in terms of drawings and charts,” he said.

As Croft noted, the books are in excellent condition for their age. “The bindings have seen some life but look at the quality of the paper here, strong paper. The real joy is that it’s painstakingly kept.

“I could happily spend a day reading this,” he added.

Croft opened one of the books up to discover beautiful sailing maps inside.

“Let’s just look at some of thew wonderful illustrated maps, this gives us an idea of where HMS Britain was sailing.

“Now, I’m imagining this is a ship built as a warship originally so probably in the Napoleonic era but by the 1820s was presumably doing all sorts of patrol missions all around the world,” he explained.

“It seems to be specified in the south Atlantic and South Pacific. So here, this gorgeous, painstaking map around the course of the southern tip of South America so here passing the Falkland Islands, round by Cape Horn and if you look at this side on the weather, fresh gales round the South Horn.

“A really remarkable voyage in a sailing frigate, probably a year or so worth of logs here but the real joy of the second one with the nice Moroccan blue binding is the watercolours. These appear to be Peruvian harbours.”

Croft then estimated the value of the books, saying: “Of course they have a value, they’ve survived beautifully. I’m going to put three to four thousands pounds on these two volumes.”

His guest was obviously very pleased, saying: “Fantastic. Unexpected! Brilliant, thank you very much.”

Speaking to the camera, he said: “They were found in a box of miscellaneous books. I thought they were probably worth pounds rather than thousands, great news.”

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