Antiques Road Trip
Antiques Road Trip is a new BBC antiques show that started in march 2010.
The premise of the show is that 8 antiques experts from other BBC shows like Bargain Hunt travel around the country in pairs, each having 5 days of buying and selling antiques.
Any antiques that are bought on day 1 are sold in auction on day 1, anything bought on day 2 is sold in auction on day 2, etc.
Any profit made by one of the experts is added to their previous days total, giving them more to spend on the following day, etc.
At the end of the show each expert gets to take the money they have accumulated and buy “1 big show stopping item” that will be auctioned in London.
(Wouldn’t it be fun if the BBC did another series of this, except this time with collectors and amateurs going on the trip to see if they can beat the experts!)
In week 1 David Barby and Anita Manning travelled around the UK and finished the week with totals of £253.88p & £285.59p respectively.
Week 2 had James Lewis and David Harper finishing the week with very respectable totals of £969.02p & £880.22p respectively.
Week 3 had Philip Serrell and Charles Hanson going head to head finishing with £323.93 & £242.81 respectively.
Week 4 was a little different with James Braxton and Mark Stacey having only a 4 day antiques road trip, and consequently they started their trip with £250 each. In the end James finished with £270.07 and Mark finished with £262.19.
In the final episode each expert bought a “show stopper” antique to be sold at Christies in London.
For some inexplicable and plainly crazy reason Charles Hanson decided to buy one of Philip Serrells lots from their road trip, and it was refused by Christies as not being of sufficeint quality, so he ended up really with a total of £98.66p, although it was reported he later sold this table for £260 – don’t give up the day job Charles!
The rest of the experts all made money before costs as follows:
James Lewis spent £490 and sold his antique for £770, finishing with a total of: £1162.77
Philip Serrell spent £300.31 and sold his antique for £400, finishing with a total of: £337.37
David Barby spent £250 and sold his antique for £400, finishing with a total of: £346.38
Anita Manning spent £280 and sold her antique for £500, finishing with a total of: £448.09
James Braxton spent £270.07 and sold his antique for £300, finishing with a total of: £213.75
Mark Stacey spent £260 and sold his antique for £650, finishing with a total of: £565.94
David Harper spent £300 on a fantastic Chinese display cabinet which sold for a brilliant £2000, giving him a winning total of: £2488.22
Poor old Charles Hanson couldn’t sell his tatty table at Christies, and so I suppose according to the rules he finished with a miserable total of £98.66, coming rock bottom last.
He wasn’t the only one to lose money though, James Braxton also ended with less than he’d started with.
It’s a very interesting show but it’s difficult to see how realistic the profits are, since the presence of TV cameras, etc seems to help the participants to buy antiques at very low prices, and also the costs of travel, hotels, food, etc are not taken into account – and any antiques dealer will tell you that these costs really do eat into your profits.
James Lewis and David Harper would definitely have made money in the real World, but the rest would almost certainly have lost money overall after taking costs into account.
It just goes to show how difficult it is to make a living buying and selling antiques.
It’s for this reason that I thought it’d be interesting to have our own “Antiques Hunt” where I only buy and sell online to see if I can make any money from antiques in this way, if I can beat the experts, or if I just flop and fail miserably!
Keep coming back to see how I do!
