Betts miscellany: "valuable antiques"

In chapter eight of Britannia, Britannia and Mevrouw Luitingh van Thien are touring the house. They tour "magnificent bedrooms furnished with what Britannia could see were valuable antiques". A page later, Britannia picks up a figurine: "'Longton Hall,' she said absent-mindedly, 'mid-eighteenth century and quite charming. Madeleine hates me.'"
Well, if she'd kept the part about Madeleine hating her in mind, I reckon there wouldn't be the tiresome plot development that took up the second half of chapter eight and (no doubt) most of chapter nine, but I digress. What's interesting to me here is the way she looks at the furniture and decorations on this tour.
A friend of mine says she always notices what other people notice, because it's revealing. Some people always notice what a person is wearing, or what books are in a room, or details about the lighting. But here, twice, Britannia doesn't note the color scheme, or the books. She notes the value of the objects: note that "quite charming" comes after the manufacturer and approximate age of the figurine.
(I just looked up "Longton Hall", because I didn't know anything about it. It was soft-paste porcelain made from 1749-1760. Britannia's right about the age, but since all Longton Hall is from the mid-18th century, why mention it?)