Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

I received it from my grandmother, who got it from a friend of hers who is an antique collector, about 30 years ago.

APPRAISER

Well, it's marvelous. It's a Chinese eggshell porcelain bowl. Eggshell means, of course, very thin.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

So thin that you really have to be careful handling it, and it was originally one of a pair. So probably what happened to the other one is somebody broke it. This was produced in the 1920s in China.

GUEST

Oh, okay.

APPRAISER

An imitation of a Ming or Qing type of bowl. Decorated with beautiful women, and that's sort of a typical pattern that would appeal to Western buyers.

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

Sort of you could look at the bowl and it screams Chinese porcelain. This little stand came with it, and it probably had a box that was beautifully rendered. But you've got the bowl. And it actually holds a Qianlong mark. Qianlong was a very important emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who lived between 1735 and 1795.

GUEST

Okay.

APPRAISER

However, as I said, this is a 20th-century bowl that was made really for the tourist market.

GUEST

Okay.

APPRAISER

In imitation of an older imperial porcelain. Now, made for expats in...who lived in China, or maybe for export to Europe and the United States, okay?

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

There were many of these made during that period of time. Now that China has opened up, the Chinese are very interested in buying these back.

GUEST

Ah.

APPRAISER

So, if you had brought this in to us 15 years ago, before this was the case, I would have told you, "No value."

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

However, now, at auction, you'd be looking at an estimate of $2,000 to $3,000.

GUEST

(laughing) Awesome.

APPRAISER

Now if you had the pair...

GUEST

That would be...

APPRAISER

It would be somewhere in the vicinity of about $8,000 to $12,000.

GUEST

Wow, wow. That's amazing.

APPRAISER

So, good timing. Good timing.