A man has been left shocked after being told a set of silver spoons that once belonged to Captain James Cook are worth £20,000.
On last night’s episode of the long-running BBC series Antiques Roadshow, the experts were at Sefton Park Palm House in Liverpool.
It was there that expert Gordon Foster met a descendant of the explorer, who came along with a ‘humble’ set of items he was keen to get valued.
As Gordon explained: ‘Eagle-eyed viewers of the roadshow would know we don’t often feature silver spoons unless they are something special…and these are.’
He went on to share that the spoons were a Georgian pair from 1750 that had Cook’s initials engraved on them.
On the episode, a repeat from 2022, the man explained that he was the ‘fifth grand nephew’ of Cook.
With one of the spoons passed down as a family heirloom, he obtained the other in an auction after discovering that his item had once been part of a set.
He recalled how there’d been ‘no limit’ on how much he’d spend to have the set in his possession.
The items were used by Cook during his journey navigating and claiming Australia in 1770.
But as said on the show, while he was celebrated in his day for mapping ‘uncharted lands’, he now remains a controversial figure for his ‘colonial exploits and violent encounters with Indigenous peoples’.
When it came time to share his valuation, Gordon said that similar spoons could usually be purchased for around £40.
‘But the question is, how much does the provenance add to the spoon? And I can tell you this provenance is like gold dust. This takes this spoon in a completely different stratosphere of value,’ he said.
‘It is quite incredible. I can say with a lot of confidence that one spoon is worth £10,000.’
As the crowd gathered around them gasped, the man’s eyebrows raised, and he nodded while taking in the extraordinary value of his items.
After briefly being left speechless, he exclaimed: ‘That’s extraordinary.’
Gordon then thanked the man for bringing the items and ‘sharing them with us’.
Captain Cook was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer and cartographer who led three important voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779.
He was also the first European to visit the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.
However, he was killed in 1779 during his second visit to Hawaii when a dispute with the native Hawaiians turned violent.
Antiques Roadshow is streaming on BBC iPlayer.
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