‘Uncomfortable’ Antiques Roadshow host refuses to value item because of its distressing history

An expert on the Antiques Roadshow once refused to give a valuation for an item due to its distressing history.

The long-running BBC programme visited Newby Hall in Yorkshire for the episode, which aired back in 2021, with expert Mark Smith on hand to dole out historical information and valuations to members of the public.

However, one woman was told she wouldn’t be getting a valuation due to the item’s history:

Smith started by asking the woman and her daughter for any information about the medallion, to which she replied: “Unfortunately my mum passed away in February this year and while we were sorting out her things we came across the medal that belonged to my grandad Tommy, which was her father.

“So it’s all been a bit of a mystery because we couldn’t find out why he actually got the medal.”

Smith then explained to the mother and daughter that the medal was created in 1955 and that he wouldn’t have been ‘awarded it’ but was instead given it as a ‘present’.

BBC

He continued: “It’s something that he does on a yearly basis, as far as I can work out, where he is taking back old soldiers. And the group in Belgium that he has affiliated himself with are a very rare group of people, because they are concentration camp survivors.”

Speaking about what the concentration camp would have been like, Smith continued: “It had two gas chambers, it had firing post to execute people, it had gallows to hang people and it had torture chambers and it’s still there.

“Now your medallion is the 10th-anniversary medal for the liberation of concentration camps and they were given to people, Belgians, who had been in concentration camps."

BBC

As the medallion was given to concentration camp survivors, Smith said he wasn’t able to give a valuation.

Pointing to a photograph that the woman brought in with her, he went on: “This is the man who gave him the medal and it’s actually signed that he was in the underground forces, part of the resistance movement and he was also in a concentration camp,’ he concluded.

“Now we always give you a valuation on the Antiques Roadshow.

“But we don’t give valuations to Holocaust things because there is no price you can put on what someone went through to be awarded that medal.

“So I can’t tell you what it’s worth but now you know what it is, I hope you think it was worthwhile coming to the Antiques Roadshow.”