Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

My grandmother gave it to me and her sister gave it to her, so it belonged to my great-aunt, and that's all I know.

APPRAISER

Okay, now it's marked on the back. Have you done any research into that, or...?

GUEST

I just looked it up once and all I found was a teapot online, that they said it was $400 for the teapot.

APPRAISER

Just the teapot?

GUEST

Just the teapot, so I thought maybe the whole set might be special.

APPRAISER

Might be special, and here we are. So, ah... (laughing)

GUEST

Maybe it is special.

APPRAISER

Well, we're going to talk about a couple different things here.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

It's made by a company called Royal Winton Grimwades. The mark on the back is gonna date between 1934 and 1950.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

There was a time that chintz, as this is called-- Old Cottage Chintz -

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

--is the name, and the chintz is the style-

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

--was incredibly popular in America...

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

...between 1985 and 1995, and a lot of people were making a lot of money picking this stuff up, buying it for $10, $15 at a boot sale in England, bringing it to America and selling it for five times that. Then something called the internet came around.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

Now, the internet allowed you to research it and find out that this teapot was worth $400. I'm gonna tell you differently today. But as the internet came around, all of these pieces became available. It leveled the playing field.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

It took items that were hard to find and made them abundant, and that evolved over time and it caused prices to really plummet. There was a time when this set would go to auction and would've brought $2,000. Today, if it's... actually, a set remarkably similar sold last week for $100.

GUEST

Really?

APPRAISER

Okay, so... there's another factor to this.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

And that is the china matching service. So a china matching service, what they do is they go and they buy these pieces, and then they sell them to folks. So if I knock this plate off the table right here, I'm gonna have to pay $70 to replace this plate.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

Now, if you go into that... those various websites and see what one item's going to cost me, you might line this up and it would be maybe $2,000 again, and that represents what would be an insurance replacement value because of the sentimental attachment of these individual pieces. So if you knock the teapot off, it's gonna cost you $400 to replace it. However, if you went to sell that teapot, it would be $40.

GUEST

Right, okay.

APPRAISER

Which is really interesting in the marketplace because that's not always the case. So unfortunately today, if you sold it at auction, it probably would have an estimate of $80 to $120 on it, but if you had to buy it and you had to replace it, it would cost you over $2,000.

GUEST

Okay.

APPRAISER

I wish I had better news for you.

GUEST

No, that's fine, it's exciting anyway.