Antiques Roadshow guest's £1 charity shop art worth fortune but it's not 'going anywhere'

An Antiques Roadshow guest who paid next-to-nothing for a piece of charity shop art really wasn’t expecting it to be given a five-figure value.

The PBS series saw expert Todd Weyman appraising items at Santa Fe’s Museum Hill when he was met by a woman with an etching to present to him.

She said: “I have been a thrifter since I was 15-years-old and I’m considerably older than that now.

“I went to a thrift store one afternoon, one blazing hot afternoon, and I found this picture of snow and it called me.”

Weyman joked: “It called you and it cooled you”, with her agreeing: “It called and cooled me and it’s still doing that.”

Read more: Antiques Roadshow guest in tears as painting she ‘forgot’ about worth a fortune

The guest already knew the etching was created by artist Gene Kloss with Weyman speaking up to give some more context.

“So Gene Kloss was a Bay Area artist and she and her husband first visited New Mexico in 1925," he said.

“They loved it so much that while they remained in the Bay Area until 1945, they kept coming back to Taos where she had a studio set up and she started making etchings like this in the late 1920s.

“Now this one is called Snow and Adobe and it dates from 1934.

“It’s a super scarce etching by Kloss, it’s known only in 35 impressions and I have never found another impression up at auction.

“She signed it in pencil, lower right, and tilted it lower left in pencil.”

The guest went on to explain that years ago, she had actually been offered a decent amount of money to take the artwork off her hands.

“One dollar on a hot day and I debated whether or not to buy it,” she said.

“It was in this cheap little metal frame and when I took it out, it was backed by a piece of cardboard and it had scotch tape on it.

“So I took it to a gallery in Santa Fe to find out, ‘Can you tell me who can clean this for me?’, and when I went to pick it up, the gallery guys offered me $2,000 for it.

“And I really felt that this was a gift, how sometimes things are just given to you because that’s where you are and that’s what you need and that’s where I was and that’s what I needed.

“And I said ‘no thank you so much. I’ll keep it, I think I’m supposed to take care of it.’ And that was 30-ish years ago.”

Stating its true value, Weyman said: “I would put a replacement or insurance value on this work at $10,000.”

The guest visibly took a step back and paused before making it clear that despite it being worth a lot of money, she would not be willing to part with the piece of art.

She said: “$1? $10,000? This is working for me, because I love it, it’s not going anywhere, thank you.

“Oh that’s amazing, $10,000. Seriously, I love this. Thank you, it’s far beyond my wildest concept.”

Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on PBS.