According to the BBC, in 1917, a pair of cousins played a small prank on their family that would spiral into a world-famous hoax that fooled even Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Nine-year-old Frances Griffiths and 16-year-old Elsie Wright were playing in their yard in Cottingley that summer and claimed to their parents that there were fairies at the bottom of the stream. Armed with their camera, a few paper cut-outs, and hatpins, the girls set out on “proving” the existence of the fairies with some doctored photos. 

Fast-forward three years, and what was once a silly family anecdote got national attention when Conan Doyle published the photos in a magazine in December 1920. Conan Doyle was deeply interested in spiritualism and saw the photos as proof of the existence of things beyond “normal reality.” The author subsequently gave the girls a new camera and asked them to take more photos, which were then published in 1921.

While most people were skeptical about the photos, it wasn’t until 1983 that Griffiths and Wright officially confessed that the photographs were fake. Twenty-five years later, Griffiths’ daughter and granddaughter showed up on Antiques Roadshow with the iconic photographs of the Cottingley fairies and Conan Doyle’s gifted camera, as told by Radio Times. Their value? A whole £25,000. Not bad for a silly childhood prank!

In 2016, a glass bottle filled with mysterious liquid that had been buried under a house in Cornwall was brought onto the Antiques Roadshow lot, much to the excitement of glass specialist Andy McConnell, as covered by the Daily Express. Estimating that the bottle was from the 1800s, McConnell was particularly interested in the liquid contents, declaring that “bottles with the liquid still preserved inside are much rarer.” In what would prove to be a regretfully nasty decision, the specialist carefully extracted the liquid, which ended up being very brown in color, with a syringe and gave it a taste. 

At the time, McConnell’s reckoned that it was port or red wine, with an added guess that it could also be “full of rusty old nails.” Three years later, after the bottle had been sent to Loughborough University for analysis, McConnell and the mystery liquid were reunited as Antiques Roadshow host Fiona Bruce revealed the actual contents of the 200-year-old bottle. 

McConnell was accurate in his guess regarding nails: There were brass pins in the liquid … which ended up being urine. Topping off the disgusting drink was “a tiny bit of alcohol, a human hair, and an ostracod.” A far cry from port or red wine, it turned out that the cocktail was a “witches’ brew, designed to ward off witchcraft and hexes.”

It’s always a nice surprise when something that you’ve acquired for just a few pounds ends up being worth £500 in value. According to the Daily Express, the large, detailed chocolate box that appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 2019 was won by the guest and her mother during a fundraiser in the 1970s. The entrance fee to the event was £1, and the raffle ticket was £5, “which back in ’76 was quite a lot of money.”

Turns out, the chocolate box had actually belonged to Queen Victoria in the 1870s. She’d given it to the wife of the Master of the Household once the box was emptied out, and it had stayed in that family until it showed up again at a fundraising raffle about 100 years later! While there wasn’t any century-old chocolate included, antiques expert Hilary Ray estimated that, with the surged interest in Queen Victoria and the royal family, the intricate chocolate box could fetch at least £500 if it were to go to auction. The uptick shocked the owner, who assumed it wouldn’t be worth more than £50, but her love for the box outmatched any desire for an extra £500, and she decided to keep it.

As archived by PBS, one of the most valuable collections to appear on Antiques Roadshow stemmed from one Tulsa man’s curiosity during a trip to Bath, England. Back in the early 1970s, the guest had spent most of his trip budget on a $500 rhinoceros horn cup that he came across in an antique shop. Such cups were made in China for ceremonial presentation purposes. With his interest piqued, collecting the antique cups became a personal passion. A few decades and over $5,000 later, his collection of Chinese rhinoceros libation cups from the late 17th to early 18th century received a shocking valuation on the show at between $1 and $1.5 million.

Part of the reason for its high value was due to the rarity of rhinoceros horn because of the rhino’s current status as an endangered species. Additionally, the Chinese art market was also booming at the time “because there are so many people in China trying to buy back things that mean something to them.” And so, before he knew it, the man who impulsively bought a rhino horn cup on a trip became the owner of a rare million-dollar collection.

As common as teddy bears are these days, it’s hard to imagine any old stuffed bear going for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that’s exactly what a black mohair bear made by the famous German toy company Steiff was valued at on Antiques Roadshow in 2005, according to The Examiner. The bizarrely high price was due to the rarity and significance of the bear, which was produced in the 1910s in honor of the victims of the Titanic sinking and called the Titanic Mourning Bear. According to Fred-i-Bear, only 655 mourning bears were made with long mohair between the years 1912 and 1919, and only 1,608 mourning bears made of short pile plush were produced in 1912.

A well-known and rare collectible in the toy world, the bear’s owner, Sonia Beggs, paid $40,000 AUD for it before learning of its $200,000 value on Antiques Roadshow in 2005. But even that mind-blowing price isn’t the maximum it could go for. According to The Age, “similar Titanic bears had reached up to about $500,000 at auction, depending on their condition.” While the memories with your childhood stuffed animal are surely priceless, it’s crazy to think that a simple stuffed bear could go for half a million dollars!