Man cries after being told he’s about to become very rich
Ted Kuntz was a guest on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow, where he brought in a blanket he said was “over the back of a chair” and was later left speechless after finding out it was worth a whopping six figures.
Expert Donald Ellis, who is an appraiser of Native American art, couldn’t contain himself when Ted approached him with the blue, white and brown striped blanket.
“Did you notice when you showed this to me I kind of stopped breathing a little bit?” Donald admitted, before asking Ted: “Do you have a sense at all of what you’re looking at here?”
Ted quipped back: “I haven’t a clue,” as Donald began explaining just how spectacular the blanket was
Building up suspense, Donald added: “Are you a wealthy man? Well sir, I’m still a little nervous here. On a really bad day, this textile would be worth $350,000 [£274,000]. On a good day, it’s about half a million dollars.”
READ MORE Antiques Roadshow guest in tears after discovering value of ‘flawed’ painting
As soon as Ted learned how much he could rake from his blanket he burst into tears.
“I had no idea!” Ted exclaimed, clearly absolutely gobsmacked at Donald’s eyewatering evaluation.
The blanket was a Navajo Ute blanket dating back to around the 1850s.
Ted revealed the blanket was given to his grandmother’s foster father by Kit Carson, a US frontiersman and when Donald heard that, he changed his estimation.
“The value of this that I’m giving is not using the Kit Carson provenance. Provenance is difficult to ascertain.
“If we could do research on this and we could prove without a reasonable doubt Kit Carson did actually own this, the value would increase again,” he explained.
Kit Carson was a famous frontiersman and was a symbol of American frontiersmen in the late nineteenth century, however nowadays his name has a more notorious connotation.
In 1864, Kit was in charge of rounding up Navajo communities and taking them away from their lands, located in the modern-day state of Arizona, and moving them to a smaller reservation.
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He asked the Navajo to surrender and when they didn’t, he would starve them until they were forced to comply.
After he forced them on what is now known as The Long Walk of the Navajo, where around 200 indigenous people died.
Despite the tragic story behind its previous owner the blanket is considered a historical relic.
Donald continued: “Sir, you have a national treasure. When you walked in with this I just about died. Congratulations,”
In a later episode of Antique Roadshow, Ted said what he did with the blanket after the evaluation.
“I knew we couldn’t afford to keep it, and it would be better served to be someplace where it could be preserved properly,” he said.
He sold the blanket to an anonymous buyer for a staggering £352,000 ($450,000) who then donated it to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Ted went on to use his newly acquired wealth to pay off the mortgage on his house.
Antiques Roadshow airs on PBS in the US and BBC in the UK.
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