Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER: When I first saw this, I got a real thrill, because when I see boxes like this, um, you know what the first word that comes to my mind is?

Faberg.

Now we should open this up.

Because when I opened it up initially, I was slightly disappointed because I didn't see Faberg, but I did see something else.

You can tell me where you got this box.

GUEST: I bought it from a dealer in Florida.

GUEST: At the time, he had three of these and he wanted to keep two of them and didn't like this one.

He thought it was kind of ugly.

APPRAISER: Well, it's a very interesting lid.

We can take the box out... Put it on the table.

And this is what we call, when we set it off, a... (twittering) ...singing bird box.

(twittering) Now, this is a kind of music box that was made in Switzerland.

But what's interesting about this is the outer box that it comes in and that says "Hammer Galleries."

And that refers to the famous American industrialist Armand Hammer, who was amongst the first people to bring treasures out of Russia after the Russian Revolution.

Now, what's very interesting about this is the-the lid that you mentioned.

It's a rather wild looking character.

APPRAISER: And if I let my imagination go wild, I'd say that's probably Rasputin.

GUEST: Maybe.

APPRAISER: But that lid didn't start life on that box.

It has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Probably when this box was new, it had a bouquet of flowers, a scene of Geneva, something like that.

It's enamel; it probably got broken and it was replaced with a Russian character and it was sold as a czarist treasure.

Now don't look so disappointed at me right now because even so, the box like this is still quite a valuable object.

And even with the lid the way it is, and this was probably done 75, 80 years ago, it's probably still a $10,000 to $15,000 box.

Still, quite special and quite a wonderful object.

And I'm really delighted that you brought it here.

GUEST: Well, thank you.

GUEST 2: Thank you.