The aim of is for the contestants to make the biggest profit possible, with an inital budget of £200. While fans at home may think it is for personal financial gain, they may be surprised to learn that those taking part in the show do not keep a single penny – for a very heartwarming reason.
After each episode costs are deducted from the overall earnings and the remaining amount is used as the budget for the next episode. At the end of a weekly run of five episodes, the contestant with the most earnings is declared the winner. The net profits at the end of each week are then actually donated to the charity .
Antiques Road Trip sees some huge wins (Image: BBC)
The records for the largest profit on a single item, the highest sale price for a single item, and the largest total profit on one road trip is currently held by Paul Laidlaw. He bought a rare antique camera for just £60, while shopping for curios and collectables in Margate, Kent.
An expert later confirmed it to be one of Auguste Bertsch’s extremely rare, 19th century, Chambre Automatique cameras — essentially a camera combined with microscope.
When he and his rival, Kate Bliss, headed to auction at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, they were gobsmacked to learn the true value of the item. Both were left stunned as the auctioneer accepted bids in £1,000 increments – a Road Trip first.
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The item sold for a staggering £20,000 (Image: BBC)
After a frenetic series of bids from within the sale room, five phone bidders and interest online the hammer came down selling the antique item to a private collector in Switzerland for a staggering £20,000 – meaning that Paul had made a record-breaking profit of £19,940.
Before that, Anita Manning held the record for the show’s largest profit – with a figure once again in the thousands. Back in 2016 the star purchased a Buddha statue, a Tibetan bronze deity, for only £50.
She later sold the item at auction for an impressive £3,800 – bringing in a profit of £3,750.