Antiques Roadshow guest's jaw drops at top value of 'collector's dream' punchbowl

An guest's jaw dropped when her "rare" punchbowl was valued at a price she hadn't anticipated.

Alastair Dickensen, an expert on the show, met with two retirees at The Royal William Yard in Plymouth to examine the punchbowl during the filming of the series.

Alastair started by saying: "You've brought along a really beautiful punchbowl which is Irish but in order to understand what it's all about, I need to turn it up and look at the marks first of all."

He then pointed out: "And if we do that, we see it's got four very unusual marks with the maker's mark 'WE'."

He asked the guests if they knew what these marks represented. One of them explained: "The 'WE' is William Egan, although he was known as Barry, Barry was Sarah's grandfather."

Alastair responded: "So it's a family-made piece. You're connected to the Egans", as the owner confirmed that Barry's daughter was her mother.

The expert exclaimed: "Goodness gracious, this is a discovery we've got here!

"Well so you know then the importance the Egans had with Cork and the development of the Irish state."

The male guest noted: "This is known as Republican silver and Barry Egan was the deputy mayor of Cork but he also ran a beautiful shop, a silversmiths he'd call it.

"And during the troubled times during the Irish Revolution, the Salvation Army office in Dublin was closed so I imagine the silversmiths couldn't sell anything because they couldn't get it SA marked.

"But in order to keep his craftsmen in work, he made his own mark and carried on selling the silver. So he was very much involved in the Republican movement."

Alastair elaborated that during this turbulent time, a treaty between Britain and Ireland had its share of controversy, especially in Cork, which he explained, "was in the hands of two camps".

There were those who supported the treaty, whilst many opposed it - the rulers of Cork were firmly in the latter group, thus leading to "all the rail connections and buses" being closed.

As a consequence, Egan couldn't dispatch his silver to Dublin for hallmarking and became "personally responsible for organising the marks" on the piece they were examining.

The expert then began to summarise: "Now what I have to tell you is that there are only 60 to 80 pieces of Cork Republican silver known.

"This puts this piece in a very special category. The bowl is something very rare. I've never seen a bowl by Egan with Cork Republican marks.

"But a bowl of this size and condition, we're talking of quite a value. I think probably £15,000."

Upon hearing this valuation, the bowl's owner was visibly shocked, with her companion exclaiming: "God. Because it was valued at -", before she finished his sentence: "£700. About 12 years ago. 15?"

To which Alastair concluded: "Like I said, there are only 60 to 80 pieces known so a lovely big bowl like this is going to be a collector's dream."

The conversation took a light-hearted turn when the man quipped: "Well there you are, you're a rich woman!", drawing laughter from those around.

Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on One and iPlayer.