An Antiques Roadshow guest was left staggered on learning the astounding value of a book uncovered in a library.
A Leeds Central Library worker brought a captivating photo album from an Antarctic expedition to the show, explaining her discovery: “I just found it on the shelves and I was really intrigued by the spine which has Morning and Scott and the Antarctic and of course, we see those words together, you think you might have something special.”
Expert Marc Allum couldn’t hide his enthusiasm as he examined the historic piece: “Often on the Roadshow, I have the privilege of handling the most incredible historic items and this is just one of those items.
“And if I look at the spine of this, it says ‘Antarctic Expedition 1901 to 1904, Colbeck, Morning and Scott’.
“So this isn’t the expedition in which Captain Scott perished in 1912. This is the earlier expedition, the formative expedition, in which so many of those people who became famous later on such as Shackleton, cut their teeth.”
The library worker revealed the pictures came from Captain Scott’s maiden journey to the Antarctic, known as the Discovery Expedition.
Antiques Roadshow guest takes a step back as expert unveils whopping price tag attached to ‘incredible historic’ book (Image: BBC)
An Antiques Roadshow guest brought in an album of photographs from the Discovery expedition to the Antarctic with Captain Scott. (Image: BBC)
Allum delved deeper: “Well let’s open it up, because what we have is an album of silver gelatin photographs and this first one says ‘Morning leaving NZ’.
“Now on the spine we saw the name Colbeck, now that’s Captain William Colbeck who was the captain of Morning.
“Essentially what he was doing on the Morning was going to relieve the Discovery, which was ice locked.
“So they set off with more provisions, men to obviously try and help Scott and what we have is an original collection of photographs.
“I think these were mainly probably taken by Donald Morrison who was the chief engineer on Morning.
“We can see many, many photographs of icebergs, ice shelves and then suddenly we start to get more intimate pictures of life on board, the ship covered in ice, walrus that they were basically hunting to eat. It really is an incredible collection of photographs.”
He then revealed that when Morning arrived to release the Discovery, they couldn’t get too close and so in the end, “they dynamited the ice to break out the Discovery”.
Antiques Roadshow expert Marc Allum said it was a ‘privilege’ to handle a ‘historic’ album of Antarctic expedition photographs. (Image: BBC)
Allum’s enthusiasm was momentarily subdued by the presentation of the photographs: “What I immediately noticed about it, is that it’s not in an original binding. Do you know anything about why it’s in this binding and how long ago this was done?”
The guest responded: “So we don’t know much about the album itself or where the photographs have come from but we think the actual binding was probably done by the library maybe in the 1990s.”
The expert shared his concerns, stating: “That worries me a little bit, because I would have loved to have seen the album or binding they were originally contained in, because I believe that Morrison would have certainly annotated some of these photographs by hand and I can’t see the backs of them either so there might be something on the backs of them. That’s something that intrigues me as well.”
Despite this, he confidently valued the book at £20,000 to £3000, causing the audience to gasp and the guest to step back in surprise, exclaiming: “Wow. That’s incredible. But of course, we will never sell it. That’s really great to know.”
Allum responded with a laugh: “Well for once in my life, I actually believe you!”
He concluded by saying: “It’s been an absolute privilege to look at this. Thank you.”
Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on One and iPlayer.