I went on Antiques Roadshow and lied to producers | TV Shows

A guest on Antiques Roadshow had a plan to deceive the show’s producers, but his scheme quickly fell apart.

New York Times journalist Jay Caspian Kang shared his experience of bringing his parents onto the PBS program to have their “ancient Chinese scroll” appraised.

Kang’s mother had found the scroll in a thrift store, paying $50 for it, and believed it might be “very old” after doing “quite a bit of digging”.

The artifact was partially composed of two colophons – sections of calligraphy typically signed by the artist. All signs pointed to the scroll originating from the 17th century, as it bore the seal of Dong Qichang.

However, when appearing on the show, the family had a “strategy” – to “play a little dumb”.

But when he reached the front of the line to have the scroll evaluated, their expert “suddenly stopped” and looked worried, hurrying off to show it to someone else.

“We had him!” he penned as the scroll was handed off to another evaluator and a producer. Despite a brief feeling of “superiority” about possibly making it on TV, Kang was ultimately informed that the scroll would be “too hard to display” on-screen and that it was actually a counterfeit from the 19th century—valued at around $2000.

Kang concluded that “everyone” who appears on Antiques Roadshow tells “the whitest of lies” – asserting that they haven’t previously researched their items before presenting them to the experts.