Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

This all belonged to my aunt, who finally had to go into a nursing home 24 years ago. And when we had to close up her home, we were all asked, "Do you want anything?" And I had loved the Fiestaware ever since I was a little girl, and asked if I could have it. It's my everyday dishes.

APPRAISER

Great. And I think there's nothing wrong with using it every day. Fiestaware was made by the Homer Laughlin Company in their factory in West Virginia. It was introduced in 1936, originally with five colors. And here you've got ten different colors represented.

GUEST

I have ten, yeah.

APPRAISER

Let's look at a piece and see what the mark looks like. Here it says "HLCO," which stands for "Homer Laughlin Company." "Fiesta, made in USA." There's several variations on the marks, and some pieces are unmarked, but it really doesn't matter particularly whether it's marked or not to most Fiesta collectors.

The two most common colors are the ones that are near you

the turquoise and the yellow color.

GUEST

Those are the ones I have the most of.

APPRAISER

The red color was discontinued because there was a scare about radioactivity and things relating to...that would hurt people's health. But later on, it was reintroduced again. Some of the unusual colors that are a little hard to find, here is the dark green, the gray, the rose, the chartreuse are a little bit hard to find. The way you get a value on a big set like yours...and by the way, how many pieces do you have?

GUEST

107.

APPRAISER

That's a massive set to have inherited. The values depend on the rarity. Some of the small pieces like the plates, which are fairly common, in common colors, they sell for $10 to $20 each, depending on which color it is. The luncheon plates and dinner plates and cups and saucers start to be $20, $25, $30, sometimes $50 or $60 on some of the rare colors on the dinners, which is each. And that's for pieces, of course, in perfect condition. These bowls here are kind of hard to find. A lot of them got chipped and broken over the years.

GUEST

They do break easily.

APPRAISER

These little nappies here sell for $20, $30, $40. This bowl here sells for $25, $50. And this bowl here is pretty hard to find. Sells for, like, $40 to $75 each, depending...

GUEST

I have eight of those.

APPRAISER

Depending on the rarity. You don't have a lot of serving pieces. You just brought one here. That one is pretty hard to find, to put fruit in or something like that. Sells for around $175. So if we add up all the pieces in your set to get a total, which I sat down and it took me about 20 or 30 minutes to figure it all up, the value of your set, if you went and bought it from a Fiesta dealer piece by piece by piece, it would be between $2,500 and $3,500 for your set.

GUEST

I had no idea it could be worth that much.