The lady explained to Antiques Roadshow expert Judith Miller how she came by her extraordinary collection, saying: “Well, my husband – my late husband, it was his collection and he collected them for over 50 years.”
She went on to say: “His father had a couple of pairs, which he gave to my husband. From then on, he just liked them. When we went to antique fairs, he was always looking for shoe buckles.
“We could go into a quite upmarket antiques shop and we were probably paying £2, something like that, for Georgian shoe buckles.”
When asked by Judith whether it had become “a little bit of an obsession”, the woman replied with a smile: “Yes, just a bit.”
It was revealed that the former collector cleaned and catalogued the shoe buckles and loved showing them to people.
The late owner’s daughters, who were also on the BBC show, admitted that they had only brought a sample of the buckles along with them and that there was “more” than 1,500 in the collection.
Judith then got to the most interesting part of the collection as she told the woman: “What do I say about value? If you just look at them and say that some of the lesser ones maybe £100 a pair.
“Some of the more beautiful ones in these cases maybe £500 to £700 a pair and if you take the cream wear ones, I would certainly see them very easily fetching £1,000.
“So if you look at the collection as a whole – and it’s pretty staggering to me – I think we’re looking here with your collection at £200,000.”
The woman appeared to be stunned and could only respond: “Well, we don’t really think of that. They are a collection and we are keeping the collection and it will get passed down to my three daughters and possibly even further down the line than that. But I love them, absolutely love them.”
Both the lady and her daughters were left on the verge of tears by the valuation as Judith said it was a “lovely story” and inheritance for the family.
This evening’s edition of the Antiques Roadshow came from the city of culture Hull and was held at Burton Constable Hall near the city.
Antiques Roadshow airs on BBC One on Sundays at 8pm.
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