Antiques Roadshow

MARK WALBERG

We had so many great objects come to Antiques Roadshow this season, we just had to share more.

MALE APPRAISER

He is, without exaggeration, the most sought after Southwestern print maker. Really? Seriously. Oh, my stars! Well, that was a good find.

WALBERG

Stay tuned and discover more treasures in our extra special episode Antiques Roadshow "Junk in the Trunk 2." Roadshow! We tapped into a deep well of treasures in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

CROWD

Welcome to Tulsa!

WALBERG

Take a look at these deluxe antique heirlooms. My husband got this from his grandmother. She got it for him for Christmas in the early '60s. She had bought it from a guy by the name of Tommy Collins, and he's had it ever since. And a lot of great musicians have played this guitar. And coveted it, I'm sure. Yes. Now, there have been some changes made to the guitar, and you know about this. Why don't you tell me what you know? The front of it was all cracked, so he just sanded it down. It had Tommy Collins' name on it, and he sanded it down and redone it so it would look nice. And what color was it originally? It was yellow. It's what they call a gold top, a Les Paul gold top. There's no serial number because it was sanded off also, but we know by characteristics that it's about a 1956. Originally, this would have had a metallic gold finish because they used a fine metal powder in the paint so when the paint cracked, the metal powder corroded. Playing condition is fine. It plays great, the neck is still nice and straight. The tuners, except for one, are original. These are what they call P-90 pickups. It was an extremely well-made guitar. On this show, we talk about how making changes in collectible things changes the value, and it does on this instrument. To me, though, the fact that it's been used and played and loved is really more significant than a diminishing value, and I'm sure people have told you that it might be more valuable if it were not refinished, have they told you that? Yes. So in the deteriorated condition that it was in-- corroded finish, lots of cracks and everything-- I still think this would have had a retail value between $20,000 and $25,000. As a retail value in existing condition, I would put it closer to $5,000 to $6,000. If I were gonna insure the guitar, I would insure it for probably between $8,000 and $10,000. (laughing) I like this kind of guitar. I like a guitar that has a history. This is my mother's clock. It's been in her family I guess since it was new. And the story always was that there was a family fire, their house burned, and that this was one of the few things that was rescued. I guess they grabbed the clock when they ran. These clocks were not made by the Southern Calendar Clock Company, but rather they marketed them. The movements in most instances were made by Seth Thomas Clock Company in Connecticut. At one point, this company had a sales force of 100 people, and they basically sold these clocks directly to clients. There were different models made. This is a fairly plain model-- some of them are larger and fancier-- but they cost originally between $11 and $85, and if you didn't have the cash, they'd give you six months to pay for it, 10% interest, so these were very determined sales people. A lot of these Seth Thomas clocks, the dials were painted zinc, and the paint has chipped off. Most of them are in really tough condition. You can see there's some paint loss up here, but wisely, over the years, nobody has repainted the dials. So this clock, except for the little paint loss on the dial, has survived in original condition. The only thing missing is this finial. I can see vestiges of glue there, so maybe it's hanging around the house somewhere, I don't know. (laughs): I'll start looking now. At auction, this clock would be estimated in the $600 to $800 range. Maybe a decade ago, this would have been worth several hundred dollars more. That's the antique business, it never stops changing. I think I didn't value it enough. Well, now you will. Yeah.

MAN

It's a painting I received from my mother before she passed away, and it's been about 15 years ago. I grew up in New Orleans, and she had befriended an older couple in New Orleans and when they passed away, they gave her this painting. I know very little about the artist. I understand that maybe he was local to New Orleans and was early part of the 1930s or '40s and it's a watercolor, and that's about all I know. Well, Alexander John Drysdale is indeed a noted Southern artist from New Orleans, and this is a typical Louisiana bayou scene. When I first saw it, I thought it possibly is a watercolor, but he painted with this very translucent oil on board. He loved this sort of tonalist way of painting, which we see here. He was born in Marietta, Georgia. He moved with his family to New Orleans at age 15, where his father was the rector of a church there. He died in 1934 at age 63, and this was painted in '32. And your painting really reflects what he was best known for. What you've done with the frame is kind of interesting. You've taken the original frame and remounted it in a larger frame, and so you've maintained its originality and given it a larger presence. Did you have any sense of the value? Maybe $1,000. Well, that would be just about right... about 30 years ago. I would think today, I would probably price it around $12,000 to $15,000, and that's a retail price for it. I wasn't going to say "wow," but thank you, Peter, for all the information.

WALBERG

At one of our stops in Eugene, Oregon, I got to shoot a segment about wine glass stems in an impressive but very cold wine cellar. (exhaling into his hands) Can we take another barrel and light it? (laughing) And Roadshow fans streamed into the convention center eager to hear news about their antiques and collectibles.

WOMAN

It was my great-grandfather's, and then it was passed down to my grandfather, and my father found it in his house when he passed away. It is a copy of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, one of his very popular books. This one, to my surprise, when I first saw it-- it was a beautiful copy, I said, "My God, this is great," thinking it was a first edition-- I went to check it out, in fact it's not, it was published in 1902. Okay. So I was a little let down. And then when I opened it, I thought, "Well, this makes a bit of a difference," and here you've got on the paste-down-- we call this the paste-down of the book-- a very nice and lengthy inscription and signature signed as "Mark Twain." His real name was Samuel Clemens. And not only has he signed it,

he's written what he was famous for writing sometimes

aphorisms. In this case, he says, "Consider well the proportions of things. "It is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise." I like that a lot. "Truly yours, Mark Twain, April 4, 1906." We don't know who that was inscribed to, if that would have been your great-great-grandfather, or do you have any... Um, I don't think so. This over here we thought kind of looked like it says, "For Rachel." Yeah, it does look like that, it looks like "For Rachel." I'm not sure who that is. And then there's a bookplate here, "Frank A. Dudley." Does that name mean anything to you? No, I was actually going to ask you about that. Yeah, he's not any recognizable collector that we know of offhand. So when we look at rare books, we look at condition, we look at the edition, and in this case it wasn't the first edition. However, the inscription with the aphorism gives it another dimension of value. I would put the auction estimate at $3,000 to $4,000. That's kind of what my dad and I were thinking. Oh, you guys had thought that already? We just guessed. If it was a first edition, it would probably be at $5,000 to $7,000, so the edition is important in the value, but it's not the overriding value of the book. Okay, I think my dad will like that.

MAN

This is my dad. These is his chaps that he wore when he was in professional rodeo. And you're from around here? Yes. A lot of people don't realize that you go over the hills here and this is rodeo country. This is where the Pendleton Round-Up happened, all the great buck-offs happened. The company that made those chaps, Hamley Saddle Company, is over there at Pendleton. It's rodeo land. So what did he do? Saddle bronc, bareback and occasionally a bull ride. So this is him doing saddle bronc riding, probably what, the '20s? Yes. And these chaps come from the '20s, you think? Yes. This other picture is him as a teenager, late teens. It was taken in the early '20s. So he was a cowboy all the way, huh? Yes, 16 on. And how did it work out for him? A lot of broken bones and not a lot of money. That's... yeah, that's rodeo cowboy. This kind of thing's gotten real collectible. Unfortunately, chaps have gone down. Ah. As they became valuable, a lot showed up on the market. These were probably worth more five years ago than they are now, but they're still a pretty good lick-- I mean, probably $1,000 to $1,500 with this history. The history's great. They have a little bit of damage on them, but who cares? They're the real thing. Oh, thank you. Thanks for coming. That's amazing on the price. Yeah, that's good, huh? Yeah!

WOMAN

I traded some pieces of Royal Bayreuth china to a friend of mine who had found these at a garage sale in California, and she wasn't interested in primitives but liked my china that I didn't care for. Okay. They're early 19th-century needlework, and when you look at needlework, one of the easy markers is costume. So when you look at him, he's got a hunting suit on with a top hat. He's wearing long pants and a frock coat. So all that's very helpful to us in telling us it's probably the 1820s, 1830s at the latest. All of us at the folk art table have looked at it, and we cannot come to a conclusion as to where it was made. My suspicion is that they're English. It's silk on silk, which makes it extremely fragile. I love these, we never see them in a pair, but condition is our tough one here. You can see there's a lot of water staining around there, some losses. The framing is not quite what you want to see, okay? The fabric's right up against the glass. You really want to reframe these, because they definitely deserve it. But the real problem that you have is they're nailed to the stretcher. So as we would traditionally take something off a stretcher, clean it and put it back on, that'd be very difficult with something like this. Having said that, they are absolutely exquisite in terms of the scene-- he's hunting, she's sitting with the animals, kind of like he kills them, she loves them-- and if they came up at auction, I think you'd feel real good about giving up your china, because I think they would easily sell for about $5,000. Great. (chuckles) This belonged to my father, and it was given to him by my grandmother probably sometime in 1941 when he went into the service after Pearl Harbor. And he wore it throughout his service in the Air Corps, and he was shot down wearing this, and he wore it ever since. In the picture here, we're looking at... this is your father right there? Yeah, that's my dad. He's wearing the watch in the picture, and this is when he's receiving the Purple Heart. Yes. Well, it's a Rolex, it's from the 1940s, and on the dial it says, "Rolex Army," and of the 1940s watches, this particular model is very desirable. And Rolex has a very unique relationship with the military. They made these watches in the '40s. They put "Army" on the dial with the intent to sell them to soldiers. Unfortunately, the dial's been repainted. Oh. The great news is it's a very rare watch. Collectors love military watches, especially military Rolexes. With the original face that said "Army" printed by the company of Rolex, it would retail for $3,000 to $5,000 in a store. Unfortunately, because the dial's been refinished, it's about $2,000 in a retail shop. It's still priceless.

MAN

Polia was a friend of my mother, stepfather and my father. They met in Chicago, and after she left Chicago, she went to L.A. and I lost contact with her other than one visit. But they were long-time friends and my father used to be in contact with her all the time down in L.A. We see a lot of her pottery. That comes up on the market a lot, and that is what made Polia Pillin famous, pieces such as these, which very often have the same type of decoration on them-- they have lots of ladies and lots of horses. You know, she was from Poland and probably moved here with her parents as a young girl, and they moved to Chicago, and Chicago has a large Polish community, and she was there for some time until she did move to New Mexico in the '30s. And she was painting in New Mexico through the '30s and early '40s, and she moved to L.A. by 1948. Oh, I see. So the two paintings you have are before that. These are both works on paper, both of them looking like a watercolor or a gouache. It's a New Mexican scene, I would think, dated here "1940" and signed by her. Now, the portrait, which is particularly arresting, you don't think of Fauve painting when you see the pieces of pottery, but it is so clear on this piece here. This is considerably earlier. It is dated "1932," signed with her maiden name. And it is so spectacular. The pieces of pottery that she does with the young girls, you can have larger pieces which will be up to $1,000. But a plate like this at auction would probably bring about $200. The paintings come up from time to time, and you see the landscapes, $1,000 to $1,500. That portrait, and I don't know if there are others out there, but it's certainly the first one I've ever seen of hers. I discussed that with a colleague at the painting table, and we seem to agree that an auction estimate of $8,000 to $12,000... Oh, my! Would be appropriate. Do you feel it is a self-portrait, or...? I don't know if it is or not. It's kind of dreamy and soulful and sad, but so very strong and kind of the precursor of what was sweet but much more commercial that she ended up doing later. Much more commercial, yeah.

WALBERG

Thousands were magnetically drawn to the Antiques Roadshow event in the Steel City itself, Pittsburgh. Hi! What stories did their treasures have to tell? This next appraisal is particularly revealing.

WOMAN

Hinda Wassau is the one who actually started this strip in 1924 by having an accident on stage, and it just went on from there. Now, how did you know Hinda? Hinda passed away in 1980, and I had met her husband at the racetrack, and he used to tell me stories which I thought were unbelievable, and I would go down to the Library of Congress and check them out, and he gave me some of her jewelry and so forth. And he was just a friend, he was an older gentleman that had no family. And then when he did pass away in 1993 is when I had to clean up his apartment, and there was the suitcase with all of the costumes. Now I have to say, if you're looking at this costume, it really looks more like a schoolmarm's costume than someone who was in burlesque or exotic dancing. Very true. But when you look more closely, I find it fascinating. You pull this over, these are the actual snaps, right, that work right here. And this just keeps snapping away. And that's what she would do on stage, she would just snap snap snap. Until it fell, yes. I love this headline. "Hinda Headed For Films? Hail Dream Comes True." But she never did, she never made it out of the theater. They wanted her to go out there in California, make the pictures, but the pictures never did materialize. And she continued dancing until she was in her '60s. Now, these items you brought, tell us just a little bit about these. This was a watch of hers, and it's considered a 1950 Gruen, and I refer to it as a doctor's watch. Because it has this moving second hand that the doctors could look at easily that would help them gauge blood pressure, time out blood pressure. Oh! Now this ring here, it actually would fit anybody's hand because it opens up... And it fits around a finger and then you snap it. Wow, very nice. So that's that one. Mm-hmm. And this belonged to Sally Rand, and Sally Rand had borrowed money from Hinda, so she gave her the ring and said, "Well, when I get the money and pay you back, then we'll go ahead and you can give me my ring," and she never paid her back. She's sort of a forgotten entertainer. Very true. Burlesque has been around since the 1860s, but the '20s brought about really the golden era of burlesque and of stripping, thanks to Hinda, thanks to Sally Rand, thanks to Gypsy Rose Lee, because they all were the ones who came on stage in revues such as Billy Rose's or Minsky's in New York and traveled also across the country and really brought burlesque to the masses. Radio and film were making such inroads into entertainment. That was vaudeville. That's right. They had to really bring burlesque sort of out of the back rooms and bring it to center stage. So she was dancing during the heyday. We're going to go through value. This costume, Sandy, I would put an auction estimate on of about $400 to $600. Okay. The ring, we can't prove whether Sally Rand pawned it or not. That was a ring that was made in the 1940s. I did check with my jewelry colleagues, and that ring today, you're looking at probably about $150 to $250. Gold value. Exactly. And this, of course, is a buckle ring, and you're looking at about $200 to $250. Okay. The watch is worth about $2,500, so if you put the entire archive together, I would put an estimated auction value of $3,500 to $4,500. Okay, thank you, Leila. It came from an old house that was being torn down, and the people were disposing of this stuff and we picked this one up. So they were just going to throw it out. They were going to throw it out. What we're looking at is what's called a reverse-painted glass sign. The important thing when you look at antique advertising pieces and almost any pieces, especially reverse-painted glass, condition is a huge factor, and this one overall is really nice. You do have some condition issues in the margins. If you look over here, you can see a little bit of white paint in here, and in this area. That could be a sign of some restoration, where the white disappeared. The interior portion is really nice, and basically what it's advertising is Economy whiskey, and when you read this sign, it's "Established by the Harmony Society in 1827," and what they were doing is they were doing pure rye and malt whiskey, and the Economy distilling company comes from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The other really cool thing about this is this isn't a replaced frame; this is a frame that it came in. And overall, it's very, very highly collectible, great purple coloring in here, silver and gilt paint. The interior center part is in perfect condition. As far as value goes, if I was to have this at auction, I wouldn't hesitate to estimate this between $3,000 and $5,000. Wow. Yeah, it's a really nice piece. I'm very glad you brought it to the show today. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Wow. A very dear friend of ours had passed away several years ago, and his wife decided that we would be the greatest recipients of the chair and take good care of it, so we received it. It should be right around 90 years old. He would be 90 in March. And I know it was his chair and it could have been his sister's, who was older, but I don't know that. Well, it's actually quite a bit older than that. Oh, my gosh! (chuckles) This is a chair that would date to the 1700s, probably the 1780s. Oh, geez. It was probably made in the mid-Atlantic region. We actually see lots of children's rockers and children's chairs on the Roadshow. Most of those are appraised at a pretty low value because they're very common. This chair is better than most of those. Wow. It's older, it's got a wonderful surface. It probably has two layers of paint. You can see some of the red that's peeking through underneath here. This is a very early red, probably the original paint, and then over that, it's probably a Victorian red that has alligatored-- the surface has deteriorated. But this is a surface that's very desirable to collectors. And also, the form of this chair is terrific. I'm going to just turn it sideways here so we can see it. It has these wonderful shaped rockers that are original-- it was always made as a rocker-- and the shape of these turnings is just fabulous, it's what collectors love. The seat is a replacement. This is a four-slat chair. Most of them have three slats. The fact that it has four slats makes it more interesting and more valuable to a collector. Now, this upper slat has been broken, but it happened a long time ago. That doesn't really impact the value. In this condition, I'm sure a collector would happily pay a retail price of about $1,500 for it. Wow. They were gifts to our grandmother, Barbara Bash. She worked for Dr. Seuss as a secretary in L.A. in the late '30s, early '40s, and so these were inscribed to her sort of as a parting gift when she was leaving to move back home. Well, they're a nice group, they're inscribed, and some of them are first editions and some of them are not. All of them lack dust jackets, so they're not in mint condition, but I would average these out at sort of $800 to $1,200 dollars each. Wow! However, this one, The King's Stilts, is more exciting because here we have a drawing by Seuss, and that's your grandmother. So that's a great thing to have. And it's signed by him at the foot, we can see that. Then at the end, we have an added bonus of an extra drawing. Look at that, "Goodbye, Bash." Mm-hmm. Now, I'm very happy to say that the value of this leaps, and I'd like to say $15,000 to $25,000. Wow. Or maybe perhaps a little more, and that's an auction estimate. Just for the one book? Just for the one book. The others are around $800 to $1,200 each. She's going to be thrilled, and we are thrilled. I'm so glad. Well, I'm thrilled, too.

WALBERG

In El Paso, we spent some time at the Old Fort Bliss Museum, and as luck would have it, we found a treasure with connections to Fort Bliss back at the Roadshow event.

WOMAN

This was found by my mother-in-law, who collected antiques, and she lived in El Paso all of her life and got to know a lot of antique dealers, and at this particular time, Fort Bliss was bringing back a lot of the troops who had great treasures, and the antique dealers knew her quite well, and they presented this to her and she snapped it up. I see, so you think it came from England. It did. Somebody who was in the war brought it back to her. Exactly. I think that's absolutely right. It's a dessert service, a dessert canteen. If I take out this tray here, we'll see the marks, and it's made by Walker & Hall of Sheffield. And this mark helps us to date it to around 1900, somewhere around there. What's also very interesting about this set is that it's not actually silver. You may have thought it was silver? I thought it was silver plate, probably. It is silver plate. Walker & Hall were a very famous company in England, and they were masters in electroplating and Sheffield plating. And if we look here, this is the bowl to serve the fruits and whatnot. If we lift this forward, we can see that it's got a wonderful array of things for the dessert table. We have two sets of nutcrackers. On either side of these wonderfully engraved chased grape scissors are these beautiful dessert spoons. Also, 12 knives and 12 forks. These are dessert knives and forks with mother-of-pearl handles and are beautifully engraved, again, with grapes and floral sprays, leaves. One of the things that's very interesting about this first here is it's in the shape of a crown. Now, that's very interesting given a letter that seems to come with the box. What can you tell me about the letter? The letter states that the person who received this received it from Queen Victoria. Now, given the crown as we can see it and given the suggested royal provenance that it may have, this could be something that's quite special indeed. However, we would need to conduct much further research into it before we understood, you know, fully how far that went back and whatnot, because obviously Victoria died in 1901 and this is dated 1954, so there's a little bit of a lag there. If we close it, we can see it's in its wonderful mahogany canteen, which is inlaid with ebony and satinwood and it's also got spandrels at the four corners of the border, which is lovely. And in the center is a vacant brass cartouche. If it was without the provenance, I would estimate it at auction for around $1,500 to $2,000. However, with the association, it could do, you know, five or ten times that much. I collect antique dolls and I saw her on an online auction, and I put a bid on her and I won the bid. I paid $500 for her. You paid $500 for her? Yes. It's a doll that was all carved in wood, carved in Gr�dnertal. It's called a Tuck Comb doll because of this little comb up here, but it's also called a peg wooden doll, and that's because the areas where they're jointed, there would be a wooden dowel or a wooden peg holding it together. It's amazing to find dolls that are in original clothing and all the original undergarments, but to find a doll of this period is even more amazing. I believe, because of the style of the clothing, the doll dates to about 1820, possibly into 1830, because this is what we call the Empire style of clothing with the high waist. Right, with the high waist. And that period is what dictates the tall silhouette of the doll and the body. The other thing that's wonderful about these dolls are the hairstyles. You'll see all the curls and all the detail that go around the top of the head, and collectors like to see many curls and many waves, and yours certainly has all of those. Probably in a retail setting on today's market, we're looking at $4,000 to $5,000. Wow. If this didn't have the crazing, we'd be looking more to $8,000 to $9,000. These are woodblock prints by Gustave Baumann, is the artist. They belonged to my grandparents who were from Albuquerque, and they purchased these from the artist many, many years ago. They knew the family; their daughter when to school with my mother, actually. Gustave Baumann is probably the most famous color woodcut artist of the Southwest during the first half of the 1900s. Uh-huh. He is a German-born artist who grew up in Chicago and by the 1920s had made his way down to Santa Fe and became really one of the founding members of the Santa Fe artist colony, and he is best known these days for the color woodcuts he made that are, as you can see in these two prints, completely evocative of this region. Very much so. Both are signed in pencil on the lower right with Baumann's orange ink stamp. Both prints are numbered just above the signatures. Right. As I can see, the condition on both prints is fairly good for prints that were made in the 1920s. Normally, the colors are susceptible to fading on these prints. That's not the case on yours; the colors are still pretty bright and you've cared for them well. There is, on the print closest to you, water staining that has seeped up from the bottom, but that's something that can be easily cleaned without affecting the print too much. Oh, okay. Now, you were telling me that you've had two appraisals done on these at different times. Can you tell me a little bit about that? About 20 years ago, my mother had them appraised for insurance, and I think they were appraised at about $4,000 to $5,000 each. Then about ten years ago, they were appraised for the estate purposes, and at that time the appraiser said they were worth about $300 to $500. He is, without exaggeration, the most sought after Southwestern printmaker on the market. Oh, my goodness. These are further enhanced by being in Baumann's original frames. Right, they are. Rarely do you find his prints like this anymore. So for each of the prints, even taking into consideration the very mild condition issues with that print, if I had to value them for insurance purposes, I would put each at $20,000. Oh, my goodness! (laughing) So both your appraisals were off, in other words. Wonderful!

WALBERG

After we checked out some mesmerizing marine life at the Georgia Aquarium, we dove into the treasures of Atlanta and captured many fantastic finds, like this one.

MAN

My grandmother bought Potthast paintings for her son and daughter, and I've seen these paintings since I was about nine years old. My grandmother was a friend of Helen Potthast. Her husband was a nephew of... Edward. Edward Henry Potthast, yes. Potthast was an extraordinarily important early 20th-century American impressionist artist. And American impressionism is sort of based on the French style of broken brush stroke and light bright colors. And he was known for really capturing the light of outdoor scenes. While he was born in Cincinnati, he traveled the world, ultimately spending the summers on the coast, and it was the marine paintings, the coastal scenes, that became the most desirable examples of his work. Now, where do you think this painting is? My dad has always told me it was Laguna Beach. What I was able to do... Was to flip the painting over, and what we have here... Is the original artist label, and it says "The coast, Ogunquit." Ogunquit is in Maine. It's signed "Edward Potthast." So we have the original artist label here. (laughing) Isn't that cool? I never knew that! And then we have it also written by the artist in ink. And we also have here a price of $250. You asked me if you could tear the back off and I hesitated, but I'm awful glad you did. Me too, me too. As I said, he is best known for his marine paintings, but he's really, really best known for his marine paintings with frolicking, turn-of-the-century kids in the waves. And I was looking really hard to see a bobbing blonde head in some of these waves, but no such luck. But it is a beautiful example of his coastal scenes. While the painting isn't dated, in terms of its style and subject matter, I would date it to the late 19th, early 20th century. He died in 1927. The condition of the painting, oil on board, is completely original. One of the other things that you brought with you is this wonderful listing from probably the early '40s of his paintings from the posthumous exhibition of his work at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York. New York. And I'm suspecting that because he was so intent on putting the correct title on the back, we would find that title here were it in this listing, and I'm not confident that it's in this listing. There were about 70 in this show that came to a total value of $23,700. Potthast has become a very important artist, and for insurance, I'm going to value the painting at $25,000. Wow. Which is more than the value of 70 paintings in the '40s. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for bringing it. These two are... they're called scholar's pieces. They sit on a scholar's desk and you'd have one flower in them. And I like the monochrome and peach chrome glaze and when I saw them, got them. This one I bought here in Atlanta from a guy who sells primarily export porcelains, and he calls this domestic, and I like domestic Chinese better than I do export. They're beautiful monochromes. This is what they refer to as a peach bloom glaze. And both of these examples are 19th century. The earlier ones, they could take control of the glaze and they could stop at absolutely short of a foot, and only in the 18th century could they do that. In the 19th century, they didn't have the control to do it. And this one here particularly shows one feature of that. Right there on the bottom, you'll see how it's been ground off there, and that's where there was a large area of drip in the glaze that prevented it from being mounted properly. But then you have this one here. There's an absolute control over the glaze, and the glaze stops absolutely even at the foot. In the later part of the 18th century, they have lapidary stone cutters polish that off to imitate that. This one isn't that way; this one is total control of the glaze, which means it's early 18th century. Great! Probably Kangxi or Yongzheng period, between 1690 and, like, 1730 or so when this one was made. And they call this glaze a crushed strawberry glaze. Okay. And it's a different technique than these peach blooms. It's copper oxide that they've used in this one. They call this a hanging gall form. And if you noticed also, if you would actually touch that foot rim of the piece, it's as smooth as talc. These are kind of gritty. Gritty is a feature of the 19th century. That smooth foot is an 18th-century technique. Any idea of the value of these things? I paid, I think, about $900 apiece for these, and I paid, I think, $350 for that one. These, they're very, very popular because they're such an elegant form. At auction, these two vases would probably sell for $2,500 apiece, these two here. Okay, that's great. This one, on the other hand, is much, much more desirable. At auction, I would expect this piece to sell for between $8,000 to $10,000. Whoo! This is a piece that I've gotten from my great-grandfather. He graduated from the Southern Medical School here in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1885. He did practice medicine; he was the only doctor in Robbinsville, North Carolina. This is a White's physiological mannequin. The date is between 1886 and 1889, and there are fold-out parts to this so that you can show the patient or the medical student different veins in the body, you can look at the bone, you can check muscle and tissue. It shows where the bones run through the leg. This is all through the whole body on the upper body as well as the lower body. It goes into the muscles and the tendons and the ligaments. This is very detailed and wonderful work. It was done by a chromolithe process which gave very vivid and wonderful colors. It is actually a very pretty piece. It's almost like a piece of art. And at auction, I would say that this one is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $1,000 to maybe as much as $1,500. Very interesting piece. Wow, I... I'm just shocked. I'm shocked.

WOMAN

This is my grandmother and one of my sisters in a knitting lesson. I know that this ring and bracelet was a gift to my grandmother. She wore it on her engagement finger, as shown in the picture, and then my father inherited it and gave it to me three years ago. Do you know who made the ring? Tiffany and Company, I believe. Right. The style influencing it is very much retro, World War II period. The ring could have been made a little bit after that into the early '50s. It's got what we call calibrated sapphires, those are those little square-cut sapphires, and then you have old mine diamonds, and then you have the sapphire in the center. We did measurements, and we figured the sapphire to be roughly 1.80 carats. Okay. It looks to us like it's probably Ceylon. In other words, that would be the origin or the region where it came from in India. Okay. It's made out of platinum. And it's got these great design elements on the side. If you look at the side of the shank, or the shoulders, you see this little kind of teardrop platinum work and it's got a little fluting. I mean, that just adds to it. They took a little bit of extra time, an extra half a day in the shop, to make the ring extra beautiful. Now along with it-- although I doubt she got this at the same time, it certainly matches-- but you've got a sapphire and diamond bracelet. Again, you have that classic calibrated square sapphires and you have the old mine diamonds, but what's interesting is the metal here is not platinum. Oh! It's palladium. It looks like platinum, but it's considerably lighter. Uh-huh. And this was used during the wartime. What's also fun is this is also signed Tiffany and Company. In this bracelet, you have about two-and-a-half carats of sapphires and about a carat-and-a-half of diamonds. In the other piece, we figured 1.80 carats for the center sapphire, and you probably have another carat in diamonds. At auction, the bracelet's $4,000 to $6,000, okay, and then we give you a price at auction for the ring, I would say $10,000 to $12,000. Really? Seriously. Oh, my goodness! Oh, that's amazing. Is that good news? Yeah, that is!

WALBERG

Minneapolis was buzzing with one of the largest crowds of the season. Roadshow fans got a surprise when I decided to improvise my lines. Hi, I'm Mark Walberg in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now, we often say here at Roadshow there's something... (loud click) (laughing) (clapping) Break your leg? No. We okay, Charlie? Gotta have fun, right? Now from a pratfall to a waterfall, check out this painting that caught appraiser Ken Farmer's attention.

WOMAN

In 1957, my parents were looking at a home to purchase, and in the attic this painting was laying on the floor, so my mother asked them, "Well, can I buy this painting with the house?" because they were going to purchase the house, and they said, "Sure, for two dollars." So she bought it for two dollars. And it hung in that house for 40 years. Have you got it hanging in your house now? Yes, I do. Well, when you first walked over with it, I just saw the frame for a second, and I loved the fact that it still had the original fire gilt there on the frame. Mm-hmm. And when you undid the scene, I figured it must be a local scene around here somewhere, it's hard to know for sure, but I bet you we could probably look around and find those falls somewhere, and maybe once somebody sees this on TV, we'll find out where it is. That would be good. It's got a nice feel to it, and it's a very naive interpretation. The houses look a little bit out of kilter as far as perspective, and the other thing that I liked about it besides the fact that it's set in that nice, mountainous landscape, is right here, I figured that must be some kind of a water wheel, probably a mill or something. I can see a lot of dirt on there, and this does not need to be relined or have any kind of major restoration done on it, but if you took it to the right person and got a light cleaning, I'll bet you that thing would jump off of there. So have you ever had anybody look at this or appraise it or anything? One time an insurance person asked my mother if he could buy it, but my mother said no. So was the insurance... what was the insurance person? He was insuring things within her home for homeowner's insurance. Most appraisers organizations have a code of ethics where you're really not allowed to do that, and it's important that if somebody appraises something for somebody that they don't buy it. This is late 19th century, maybe 1890, 1900. It could be a little bit after that, even. If this painting were in New England or some other part of the country where there's so much more material to pick from, the price would be pretty reasonable, but I think because it's from this region and it has good local appeal and a good scene that its retail value would be probably $4,000 to $6,000. Oh, my stars! Well, that was a good find. We found this globe in my grandmother's attic, and it was probably in the late '60s, my aunt had decided to remodel, and she was not particularly into antiques that weren't perfect, and so she began to throw things out of the second story window. Well, my mother happened to be visiting and she caught quite a few of the antiques and put them in the backseat of her car. This was one of the things she managed to catch. And she physically caught it? She physically caught this. My aunt threw it out the window, yelling, "Take it to the dump!" It is a celestial globe dated to 1852 made by Merriam & Moore, stationers. There's a couple things that are interesting about it, most notably that it was made in Troy, New York. There are major globe and cartographers in Philadelphia and Boston, but the fact that it was made in Troy, a small town where there weren't many, it makes it a little bit more desirable to collectors. There are a few condition issues with it. If we spin it around here and come around to the back, we can see where a little of the paper has come away. There's a crack in the side here and there. Nice cast-iron base, and this is a more desirable base than some of the pieces, given the way it looks and sits. There are a couple of different types of globes that are out there. The terrestrial globes bring the real big money. You're also dealing now with an economic condition that's not as great as it was. Today, if you saw this at auction, I would anticipate you'd see it between $1,200 and $1,600. And it would not surprise me if it went up above that. In '05 had you seen it, however, it probably would have been closer to $2,000 or $3,000. All in all, it wasn't a bad catch out of a window. No, good catch, Mother.

MAN

My business partner and I were making some calls, and we noticed it in a jewelry store and it was way up on a back shelf and wondered what it was, and he didn't know what it was, but he thought it was worth $1,000 so we bought it. (laughing) Oh. Was it covered in dust? It was covered in dust. Basically, all we did was just blow it off, so there's still dust and things on it. Well, first of all, it's a barometer, and within this space here is a dial. It's calibrated to tell changes in barometric pressure so that you could, in fact, in some way, predict the weather. It is in the French language, so presumably this was used in a French setting. The casing for this, however, is more of a Black Forest carving, and we all are familiar with cuckoo clocks and other sorts of Black Forest carving, and this is of that basic genre, dating about 1880s. This figure here who is staring at me and making me very nervous as I'm talking to you is a lot more pleasant in many ways than some of the subject matter that are found on these clocks; that is, you know, dead deer and rabbits and pheasants and that sort of thing, so it's always sort of a hunt scene. Most people would think that these things were carved entirely by hand by various craftsmen, but these were roughed out by manufacturing methods and touched up by hand carving methods. There was probably a companion piece to this with the same sort of carving, only the companion piece would house a timekeeper, or a clock. As you'll notice, it's signed with a name here, "P. Michel." That's the carver. You said you paid $1,000. Were you nervous paying $1,000? Absolutely. Yeah, because you didn't know really what it was, right? I had no clue what it was other than the fact that it was just kind of cool. I think that this piece in a retail setting is probably closer to $4,000 today as this sort of carving is very popular in some circles, particularly in Europe. Hey, I wasn't taken. (laughing) Thank you for bringing it in to the Antiques Roadshow. Absolutely. I acquired it from my dad when he passed away probably about 15 years ago, and he acquired it from a guy. Did he buy it from him? You know, I don't think he bought it. They worked together and I think he gave it to him. Gave it to him as a gift. Uh-huh. This is the log of the voyage that started on Christmas day in 1831 of the whaling ship Timoleon, and it lists where they anchored, when it sailed and the dates, and it was a long sail because it started in '31 out of New Bedford and ended in 1835. Logging teeth are rather rare, but another rare thing about this particular tooth is its height; it's a huge tooth, it's an eight-inch tooth, which is very, very desirable for collectors. On the reverse side, they have the picture of the ship, the whaling ship Timoleon, and it also says the name of the ship here and the master, which is J. Bunker. It doesn't list the whales that they caught, but it lists all the locations that they went to. And it was quite a busy ship, as you can tell from the log. I think conservatively, at retail, it'd probably sell somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000. Oh my, really? That's unreal. So your father gave you a nice thing. Yeah, I know it. It's going to move a little bit closer on the fireplace.

WALBERG

We hope you enjoyed this special episode of Antiques Roadshow. Stay tuned for the feedback booth, right after this. And now, it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth. The most exciting thing I found out about my cane is that it might have a flask in it, so I can't wait to get home and break off the top and drink some maybe 90-year-old moonshine. (laughing) Okay, girl, I'm with you. We had a great time today at the Antiques Roadshow. I brought this book that was signed by Elbert Hubbard, I thought that was pretty cool. Found out he signed just about anything, and it was worth maybe five dollars. We brought this worthless Mexican pot, but we learned what provenance means, and it means that even though it's worth nothing now, someday it will be priceless because it was owned by us. We came down to the Antiques Roadshow to bring this Kenyan head rest that's worth $200. And I'm not sure I'd pay ten after sleeping on it last night. (laughing) This is a painting that I got at Goodwill for four dollars, and I found out it's worth $150. I feel rich! We came to the Antiques Roadshow to have them check out our silver-plated creamer and sugar bowls, and we found out they might be worth $20. Now we just need to find a buyer. I found out that my 1875 camp stove is worth about $150 to $200! This one is worth over $300 at auction. I'm thrilled! I've got about 40 of them! I'm Mark Walberg. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time on Antiques Roadshow. Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org