Elderly man breaks down in tears on Antiques Roadshow after learning astonishing value of his treasured childhood blanket

A elderly man breaks down in tears after learning the high price point of his childhood blanket.

In a resurfaced clip from Antiques Roadshow, Ted Kuntz showed appraiser Donald Ellis a blanket he said was 'over the back of a chair' in his house.  

Kuntz said the blanket was given to the foster father of his grandmother by Kit Carson, an famous United States frontiersman during the late nineteenth century.

During the time when Kuntz lived with his grandmother, he said the blanket was on the bed where he slept and kept him warm during the cold winter months.

'Did you notice when you showed this to me I kind of stopped breathing a little bit?' Ellis said to Kuntz. 'Do you have a sense at all of what you're looking at here?'

Knowing Kuntz was oblivious to the true value of the blanket, Ellis asked him 'Are you a wealthy man, Ted?' as he knew his life was about to be forever changed.

The blanket Kuntz brought in was actually a rare Navajo Ute First Phase chief's blanket, one of the first types of chief's blankets made between 1840 and 1860.

'This is Navajo weaving in its purest form,' Ellis said, noting the blanket's unbelievable condition. 'It is the most important thing that's come into the Roadshow that I've seen.'

'On a really bad day, this textile would be worth $350,000. On a good day, it's about half a million dollars,' Ellis said, Kuntz's eyes welling up with tears.

The item's value, the appraiser explained, did not factor in the item's provenance as a gift from Kit Carson, which could not be confirmed at the time. 

Sadly, there is a bleak history associated with the infamous frontiersman.

In 1864, under military orders, Kit Carson led the forced relocation of Navajo communities from their ancestral lands in present-day Arizona onto a much smaller reservation. 

When the Navajo resisted, Carson's tactics included a scorched-earth campaign aimed at starving them into submission. 

This brutal episode, known as the Long Walk of the Navajo, resulted in the deaths of thousands – a devastating loss of life considered an act of ethnic cleansing today.

Despite this horrific truth, the blanket was said to be worth 20% more if it had a confirmed connection to Carson.

Kuntz said he immediately contacted Ellis to see if he would be interested in helping him sell the blanket. Ellis offered him $300,000 with the idea that they would split whatever he was able to sell it for. 

However this offer was made before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Ellis was stuck with a $300K investment into the blanket, but no sale in sight to complete the second part of the deal.

In a later episode, it was revealed that the blanket had been sold to an anonymous buyer for $450,000 years after Kuntz had appeared on Roadshow. The blanket was then donated to the Detroit Institute of Arts and Kuntz used his windfall to pay off the mortgage on his house. 

'I knew we couldn't afford to keep it, and it would be better served to be someplace where it could be preserved properly,' he said.