A figure of $120 was not exactly the price a prospective seller had in mind when he brought an 80-year-old box of birth control to a Swedish version of “Antiques Roadshow.”
The exhibitor told presenter Joakim Bengtsson that the treasure had been found under his grandmother’s bed in the 1980s, but that his grandfather had purchased the archaic condoms decades earlier.
“Grandad bought them. He died in 1939, so these are from the 1930s,” the man told Bengtsson, The Local reported.
“Aren’t they a bit spacious?” the presenter joked.
Considering that prior to the 19th century a popular material for making condoms had been sheep’s intestines, the proffered prophylactics made from tightly woven silk represented a great advance, Bengtsson explained.
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“I don’t think we have valued condoms in Antikrundan previously” Bengtsson said. “They’re just perfect these things, so there must be some value in them.”
Bengtsson valued the condoms at a thousand kronor ($120) and said that it was “great fun that you came here with them.”
The world’s oldest existing condom dates back to 1640, and was also uncovered in Sweden. It can be found in an Austrian museum.
Made from pig’s intestine, such a condom was reusable, with a user’s manual advising that it should be washed in warm milk to ward off sexually transmitted diseases.