‘Mystery' item couldn’t be valued after Antiques Roadshow expert revealed its dark and tragic past
A mom and daughter hoping to make some extra cash with their antiques quickly learned why their 'mystery' item could not be valued after speaking to an expert.
Shows like Storage Wars and the UK's Antiques Roadshow are great examples of why you should never throw anything out.
Something that might be old or forgotten to one person could potentially be worth the big bucks to another, and that's exactly what one mom and daughter were hoping to find out when they appeared on BBC's Antiques Roadshow in 2021.
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The pair decided to go on the show after coming across some items of potential value while going through the belongings of a relative who had passed away earlier in the year.
However, when they presented one particular item to military medals specialist Mark Smith, he refused to put a value on it.
The mom explained they found a medal that 'belonged to [her] grandad Tommy' and the origin and meaning of the medal has always been 'a bit of a mystery'.
Upon inspecting the item, Smith revealed that the medal, made in 1955, wasn't awarded to Tommy but was instead 'given to him as a present'.
The reason why he refused to value the item was because of the reason why Tommy was given the medal; it indicated he was affiliated with a 'very rare group of people' because they are 'concentration camp survivors'.
Further explaining the medal's origins, Smith continued: "Now this is in Belgium and this is a place [...] which is just outside Brussels and like all other concentration camps it's just as horrible. 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."
Smith pointed to an image of 'a prisoner wearing a concentration camp uniform' on the front of the medal, and a triangle with a 'B' on the back which indicated the wearer was Belgian.
"And then the color indicated what you were actually in prison camp for," Smith continued. "So if the triangle is yellow, you're Jewish, if it's black, you're a political prisoner, if it's pink, it's a homosexual. It's a terrible regime."
The expert added that in 1955, 'a program was started to record the names of everyone who had perished in the Holocaust and they're still doing it to today'.
"I think they're up to about four-and-a-half million names now but that's when it started and I have a feeling that that's what this is for," he says.
When it came to the value of the item, Smith told the mom and daughter: "We always give you a valuation on the Antiques Roadshow, but we don't give valuations for 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."
Topics: History, Film and TV, Money
Emily Brown