Antiques Roadshow Guest’s $30 Ring Shocks with Show-Stopping Appraisal
A bargain-bin sparkler turned out to be far more than costume jewelry, leaving the guest and appraiser stunned.
When one Antiques Roadshow guest walked in clutching a ring she scored at auction for just $30, no one could have predicted the jaw‑dropping twist about to unfold.
The silver ring, set with a seemingly rectangular‑shaped gemstone, seemed modest. The guest had paid “about $30” and thought it was a cubic zirconia in silver. After doing some sleuthing, she shared, "I bought it at auction, got it home, and I noticed it had a lot of sparkle. It was sold to me as a cubic zirconia in silver. It really had a lot of fire, so I got under a microscope and started noticing little symbols on the outside of the shank and did a little research into one of the marks: the dog head platinum, a French mark. I just typed in ‘dog’s head, hallmark’ into the and that's what came up. It said that France started using the dog head hallmark in about 1912.”
Appraiser Mark Schaffer was intrigued, especially by the odd markings and fine sparkle. As the guest had hoped, there was more to the story. He and his team tested the ring numerous times and determined the reason for the confusion.
Schaffer told the guest that the ring did not hold only one stone. "Initially it looks like one stone with multi-facets," he said. "But then once you start looking more closely, you realize that there's a central stone.”
Then came the big reveal. This wasn’t costume jewelry after all.
According to Schaffer, “We tested it, we looked at it, we put it under the loupe, we used the diamond tester just to be sure. But in fact, it does test as a diamond, not as a CZ. What you have is a ring that looks like it's sort of eight to ten carats from the top as a diamond. In fact, in the center is a stone that's about 1.5—let’s say a carat and a half, and a few more carats in the surrounding stones in a platinum mount. It's a style of ring that could be as early as the 1920s, 1930s."
Suddenly, the guest’s $30 bauble transformed into something extraordinary. Schaffer couldn’t hide his excitement when naming the value, sparking a moment worth replaying.
"Altogether,” he said, “given the carat weight, in a retail setting, I would say a conservative selling price would be in the $25,000 to $30,000 price range."
The guest was stunned, and honestly, who wouldn’t be?
Still reeling in shock, the guest said, "Amazing. Amazing. I am shocked and happy. This is great."
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