Antiques Roadshow

MARK WALBERG: Antiques Roadshow is buzzing with activity in the Beehive State-- Utah.

In 2002, I got to run the Olympic torch.

Cat got your tongue?

Well... No way!

WALBERG: Antiques Roadshow regularly sees treasures from humankind's distant past, but none come close to being as old as these giants.

The Natural History Museum of Utah has an incredible paleontology collection.

Gryposaurus monumentensis stomped around Utah tens of millions of years ago, and was likely the largest dinosaur of its time, reaching 40 feet in length.

We don't expect to see anything that large today, but check out this archive of a 1,500-foot long Utah artwork.

MAN: So when I was a kid growing up in our house, we had a large photograph of the Spiral Jetty hanging in our house for as long as I can remember.

It was a photo that my dad loved and that my mom didn't love quite so much.

And it wasn't until I went to college and I was in an art history class, and opened my art history textbook and saw the photo that was hanging in our family room for years and years and years... Yeah.

...that I went to my dad and said, "This is kind of a big deal, Dad."

And when I showed him that, he went into his closet and took out a folder full of materials like this.

Apparently four or five different contractors passed on the job because they didn't want to take their equipment out to the Great Salt Lake for fear of damaging it.

He was the first one who accepted the job from Robert Smithson.

He worked in construction for decades and built practical things-- roads, gas lines, things like that.

But for whatever reason, I think this was special enough to him or weird enough to him that he kept everything.

He would tell stories all the time about how Smithson was very particular about going down with these big wooden lathes and then climbing back up the hill to look at where rocks were being placed.

He was very particular, apparently, about the way it was constructed.

What we have here is the contract that your father had with Smithson.

And there was some additional work?

Yeah, originally, as you can see on some of the sketches here, it was like a big "J" with an island in the middle.

And after the project was completed, Smithson came back to my dad and said, "It's not quite right, it needs to be changed."

And so he requested that it be turned into more of a spiral.

They did an additional change order for that that was $3,000 additional.

The thing about Spiral Jetty is soon after it was made, the water levels had risen.

You couldn't see it until the early 2000s, when a drought lowered the lake.

And now it's become a pilgrimage spot for land artists, Utahans.

It's kind of become a symbol of Utah, hasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's definitely a very special place for my family.

We went out there just recently, all together as a group, and the water level has receded so far that it's easy to just walk out, all the way out, surrounding where the jetty is.

Smithson was born in 1938 and he died in 1973 in a plane crash while surveying Amarillo Ramp only three years later.

So what you have here are a variety of drawings with a variety of different detail.

This one is a more general piece, and this is the second version of the Spiral Jetty, I would take it.

This work has more of the landscape surrounding it.

This one has some red pencil as well.

The red is my dad doing drawings and diagrams to sort of explain how things could actually be built.

So the importance of having the proposal and having the photograph that was autographed to your father is that it authenticates the drawings, because the drawings themselves are unsigned.

There are records of drawings of Spiral Jetty coming up and selling.

There's a wide range.

Works of this quality with all of the detail, so this work and the work in the center here, I would value at about $15,000 each, conservatively, in a retail gallery.

I would think that this would be more like $10,000 in a retail gallery.

And this one, which shows the first version and the second version, I would say would probably be about $7,500.

Wow.

So the collection altogether is $47,500.

That's pretty staggering.

I mean that... that really would have delighted my dad.

He passed away just earlier this year, and I... he probably... he would have been delighted just to have the work shown.

MAN: It was a great-great-great-uncle's watch that passed down through my family to my dad.

Each one was an Albert.

I'm a Jonathan Albert, and that's why it came to me.

It came from Albert Fenn, who was a friend of George Eastman, and he contributed to George's business startup, something called Eastman Kodak.

Okay.

Do you know approximately what year the first Albert got it?

It would have been in the 1800s.

Well, I looked up the date of the mechanism, and it was manufactured in the year 1900.

Huh.

You have the original wooden box for it, which is really great.

You have everything, and you also have the original warranty certificate on there.

You told me something about when you were a child you were... you had it, or you were playing with it?

Oh, I first saw it when I was in elementary school in my dad's dresser, and thought it was pretty cool, and brought it to school to show my friends.

And the teacher spotted it and decided that it would be better if he kept it and gave it back to my dad.

I never saw it again until he passed away and it came to me.

And you mentioned to me that you thought that it dinged or something?

Yeah, it... if you press the top, it makes a ding sound.

Okay, do you know why it does that?

No.

Well, what you have here is a Patek Philippe.

It's a minute repeater pocket watch.

The mechanism is very special on it.

It's a two-train movement.

It's very unusual.

It has two mainsprings instead of one.

You wind it in one direction for the time.

The second direction winds the repeater mechanism.

That dinging sound that you heard is a repeater.

And repeaters were originally invented so that they could tell time in the dark.

Huh.

Yours is a minute repeater, which means it will tell you to the minute what time it is.

It'll first strike the hours, then the quarter-hours, and last the minutes with two hammers that are located right down here.

Huh.

And they strike on two gongs, and you trip it by pressing the button down on the top.

And those hammers will strike.

(dinging) And there it is striking the quarters and now the minutes.

Huh.

These are very complicated watches.

This movement is of the highest quality.

Wow.

Fantastic piece of machinery, all done without the aid of computers.

Let me show you.

On the front of your watch, you'll notice that you have black spade hands.

These usually came with gold filigree hands.

And I looked in your box in the back here, and there's an envelope.

And the envelope actually has the serial number of the watch.

And in French, it says, "Hands, Louis XV style."

I opened them up, and lo and behold, we found the original gold Louis XV hands in here.

They turned dark, but they're solid gold, they're rose gold.

Wow.

And so you have the original hands in here.

So you think they were never put on?

I don't know.

Originally it came with the watch, for sure.

Perhaps they were difficult to see, and one of the relatives wanted darker hands that were easier to read, so the spade hands were put on.

Going back to the value of the watch, you estimated about $1,000 for the gold content.

And you're correct.

It most likely has about, I would say, $1,200 to $1,400 in gold value.

But being that this is a Patek Philippe, it's a very special watch.

Now normally a Patek Philippe in a wooden box like this, with the papers, easily worth $5,000 to $6,000.

But your watch is a minute repeater, and it's not a normal minute repeater-- it's a trip-minute repeater.

So your watch today could easily, in today's market in auction, be sold for $35,000.

(gasps) Wow.

(laughing) Wow.

That's... (exhaling) Wow.

(voice breaking): Excuse me.

Amazing.

I'm glad your teacher took it away from you in school.

And if you're going to insure this, you need to insure it for about $50,000.

Wow.

(chuckling) Oh, thank you.

He did say that this one was done using the death mask of Joseph Smith.

Well, it could very well be a copy of a death mask, but not using the actual mask itself.

APPRAISER: I think the gun may have originally been a different type of ignition system.

Because somebody has carved out the back of it.

So you have a mid-19th century plains rifle.

Are these bone?

That's bone.

And this is turquoise.

And then this may be coral, and it might be plastic.

My aunt was Lucille Ball's hairdresser.

she worked with her on a movie, and then Lucy asked her to come and work on the show.

And they worked together for many years after that.

So she helped her come up with the signature look?

She did.

They went through many series of test shots of how Lucy's hair should look on the show.

And in a few of the shots you can see what it ended up like.

Fans love to see never-before-published, behind the scenes, not posing perfectly.

I think what's great, in a lot of these you can see her smoking her cigarette.

She has a cigarette in her hand over here.

She's got her cigarette here.

And of course, the studio people made sure that those types of pictures never made it into the newspapers.

They kept very clean-cut images of their stars.

But they're really the kind of the more personality-driven things that the collectors really like.

And they're from films from 1946 all the way up to 1953.

And we have about 60 here.

Mm-hmm.

So for the group, at auction, expect them to sell between $4,000 and $6,000.

Wow.

When I was first married, which was about 100 years ago, I moved into an older neighborhood and became best friends with a woman who lived on that street.

Her family owned a very prominent furniture shop here in Salt Lake, a furniture store.

And I've always assumed this piece came from that store.

It was in her home, and when she died, none of her children wanted it.

And so they asked me if I would like it, and I have had it for the last 23 years.

Wonderful.

What's really interesting about it is that stylistically when you look at it, the original design would have dated it as being Federal, from the Federal period, about 1790.

But this piece was actually made in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in about 1945 to 1950.

Oh.

And it was made by a company called the Irwin Furniture Company.

And we know that because there's actually a little tab on the inside, right in here, on the drawer.

And it says "Irwin."

And that was a furniture company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Was in business from about 1919 to 1953.

So one of the reasons we can tell that it is not from the Federal period is the way it's constructed.

When we open it, we can see the lock is inset.

Yes.

Which makes it thoroughly 20th century.

Uh-huh.

Also, on the front right here, this is this wonderful flame veneer.

But you see that it's sort of... there's a little sort of cracking and lifting to the surface a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

That's because the veneer has been machine-cut-- very, very thin.

Quite literally paper thin.

Oh, really?

As opposed to an older piece that would have been hand cut, and not quite as thin.

So as such, there's some shrinkage.

It's sort of separating slightly.

So we can see that.

And I think that many viewers who watch the show will take a closer look at pieces of furniture in their own dining rooms to see if they can figure out whether it's a wonderful 20th century reproduction, or if it's an 18th century piece as well.

If you were to see it in an antique store today, I would expect you to pay around about $1,500 for it.

Oh, okay.

All right.

If it were 18th century, the value probably in the store would probably be about $5,000 or $6,000 in a retail environment.

So there's not a considerable difference, and that's really just a product of the market today.

Mm-hmm.

MAN: During the 1960s and '70s, I worked at the White House during the President Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations.

I worked in the White House Situation Room.

And what I have here are the first news wire reports received in the Situation Room that told about the landing on the moon in July of 1969.

I timestamped them with the White House Situation Room timestamp, and sometime later then they were taken up to President Nixon's secretary, and she was kind enough to take them in and have two of them autographed for me.

I had those at home, but ten years later, I was still working in the Situation Room, and I noticed that on the 20th of July of '79, President Carter was going to be meeting with the three original astronauts.

And they were going to be having a ten-year commemoration in the Rose Garden of the White House.

And so as they came in, I had the chance to talk with each one of them, and after a couple of minutes conversation, I'd ask them to sign the documents.

All three astronauts signed these two, and Neil Armstrong was the only one to sign that third one.

This picture is wonderful.

This is probably the most scowly I've ever seen all the astronauts together.

(laughing) And here we have President Jimmy Carter, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins.

You've got Neil Armstrong's signature here, and again it talks about his stepping off the footpad of the Eagle moon lander to the surface of the moon.

And it's timestamped 10:56 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time.

The date on this: July 20, 10:56.

The signatures are wonderful.

They're perfectly clear of all three astronauts from the Apollo 11 program.

Wonderful signature of Richard Nixon.

Unfortunately, this one has been damaged by water.

Yes.

So... and it's personalized.

Richard Nixon's signature is kind of blurry.

Buzz Aldrin's is pretty good, but Collins' and Neil Armstrong's signature kind of wash away a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

So that affects the value greatly on that particular one.

But for the entire collection, I would give a conservative auction estimate of $24,000 to $34,000.

Hmm.

Okay.

To break it down, this particular one is $10,000 to $15,000.

Uh-huh.

Because of the damage on this piece, the $8,000 to $10,000.

Mm-hmm.

And this one would be $6,000 to $9,000 on its own.

Hmm.

And the photo itself is about a $20 photo.

I brought in a family heirloom clock.

It was purchased by my third-great grandfather.

The story from my family is that it was purchased during the Civil War.

It came to me from my father.

He's the one that refinished the outside of the cabinet-- I hope that's not a problem.

But it was falling apart at the time, so he fixed it up a little bit.

And is it something that you use?

Do you have it displayed in your house?

I have it displayed in the house.

I don't wind it, because it's so old I'm afraid to break it.

The hands are a little loose there in the center.

And so when the minute hand goes down this side, it looks like it's a little fast, and up the other side it looks a little slow, so... Well, this clock was actually made by Chauncey Jerome.

And they first started making these about 1845.

Now, Chauncey Jerome was a very colorful character in the clock industry.

He was one of the first people that got involved in mass production on a significant scale, and is probably one of the first-- by today's standards-- millionaires in the clock business.

He actually had a movement factory up in Bristol, And when they opened up the Farmington Canal, he made a case-making factory down in New Haven.

And he would bring all his movements down to the case-making factory and have them cased there.

Then he'd send them all over the world.

He was one of the first guys to really export clocks on a grand scale.

And from 1843 to 1845, he was the largest manufacturer of clocks in the world.

Because of Chauncey Jerome's movement progression and the way that things developed, we put on a date of circa 1845 for this clock.

Like most clock businesses, they come and go as fires creeped into their history.

In '45 they suffered a big fire, and that really hurt his production.

But he regained strength again.

Chauncey Jerome becomes the New Haven Clock Company by the 1880s.

This Jerome we call a foilfront is just a spectacular looking shelf clock.

The case is rosewood, it's considered an exotic wood.

The presentation of this clock with the front of it having this foil surface is very, very unusual.

It's actually a copper plate that's engraved, and it has a gold wash over the front of it.

Oh, okay.

That's why it has this wonderful presentation, and actually has depth to the details.

All these details are engraved into the pattern.

So if you lost that gilt surface, it would actually be a copper color.

They made this in three different colors, apparently.

This one with a black background or a dark navy blue background.

I've seen them in green and red.

And again, this is a very rare clock.

I've seen probably less than a dozen of these things in my almost 25 years of business.

You have a very collectible, very desirable mantel clock.

Any idea of its value today?

Well, I have no idea.

I just had a wild guess of $200, but I really don't know.

Being a collectible clock, it takes it out of the category of what's very, very common.

This clock today, if you would try to replace it at a high-end retail shop, a really nice clock shop, you'd probably have to spend somewhere between $1,500, more likely $1,800.

Okay.

Okay?

Very good, remarkable.

Yes.

My dad used to work at a movie theater back in the '70s.

APPRAISER: And there's thousands of variations of these posters.

You'll find every incarnation.

Beautifully hand-colored map.

We've got to take the value down a bit because of this big bite out of it.

I know.

So I've got to give you a value for what it's worth in as-is condition.

Yeah.

Approximately $500 at retail.

Oh, my gosh.

(laughing) Yeah.

Wow.

(chuckling) Oh, wow.

Oh, my word.

So this is a hat that my boyfriend's grandmother picked up.

Okay.

And she lived in Idaho in 1960, and Kennedy made a campaign stop there in Idaho, and she worked on the campaign.

But a friend of hers apparently met Kennedy and got this hat signed and gave it to her.

Cool.

It's a neat hat.

I mean, it's a standard kind of premium giveaway hat.

A molded plastic.

Right.

And it looks like Angie Dickinson signed it here.

Right.

And then we have the image of his PT 109, which was his boat from World War II.

And of course '60 for the year of the campaign.

And then here we have Kennedy's signature.

Right.

Now, Kennedy's signatures are very tricky.

Because it evolved over many, many years, and it changed quite a bit.

It became very hard to read.

He also used autopen and secretarial signatures.

So it's complicated.

This is also a hard place to sign.

Right, it would be very difficult.

On the hat.

So, but in my opinion, based on ones I've seen, that looks perfectly right to me.

Okay.

And so it's cool.

Yeah.

So if this hat as a collectible item wasn't signed, but a neat Kennedy political item, in this condition, you know, retail is maybe $30 to $40.

Okay.

Now we put Angie Dickinson, that helps it a little bit.

But we take Kennedy and put it on there, his signature is fairly scarce, because he did use autopen quite a bit.

Okay.

So we have a $30 collectible hat that turns into $1,000 to $1,500.

Oh, wow, that's great.

That's exciting.

Today I brought in a manuscript, a musical manuscript, that was personally written by Giuseppe Verdi.

It's an excerpt of his opera La Traviata.

And it was written on the 20th April of 1858, and signed by Giuseppe Verdi.

A dedication probably to a friend.

And how did you get it?

I grew up in Vienna, and our neighbors were Austrian Jews, and they escaped to London, and they were very involved in the Jewish refugee community.

A lot of Jewish refugees brought over valuable items that they could smuggle out of Nazi Germany.

Among others, autographs such as this one, and they specialized in trading and buying many of those autographs.

So over time, they built up a very large collection of signed autographs mostly by famous composers.

I've known the couple since I moved to Vienna in the 1960s.

They became very close friends of ours.

Over time, they gave my dad a couple of those pieces.

My dad was a big Verdi fan.

That was his favorite opera.

So I guess that's why they gave it to him, yeah.

Well, it's a terrific piece.

In the manuscript world we would call this an autograph musical quotation, signed.

So it's not the working manuscript, it's not the draft of Verdi.

Sure, sure.

But someone, a friend, a fan, asks Verdi to give him a few bars of a famous aria from Traviata, and he complied.

What's nice about your example is that unlike the usual autographed musical quotation, which is only about three bars of music, this is 16 bars.

Oh, really?

This is really a full... Never counted it.

...a full musical phrase.

And it's signed, and it's dated as well.

What's great about this is it really helps explain what manuscript collectors are looking for.

Manuscript collectors want letters, documents, manuscripts from famous people, but they want those letters, documents, manuscripts to show the person doing what he does best.

Sure.

If you have something from a musician, you want the musical quotation.

You want to see the bars of music.

And the more, the better.

It has a few condition problems.

This is probably some silverfish damage up here, so it might bear reframing it, and perhaps treating it more archivally.

So this full page 16-bar musical quotation I would put at auction for $8,000 to $12,000.

Oh, really, yeah, okay.

That's very, very nice.

Now I know for insurance purposes what to do.

If you were going to insure it, you could double it to $16,000 for insurance purposes.

Okay, but it's... but it's definitely good to know.

MAN: We go to quite a few yard sales, garage sales.

APPRAISER: Yeah?

MAN: And we went to one, and this lady had this one in Preston, Idaho, and she wanted two dollars for it.

And I thought, "Well, two bucks is all right," but I wasn't very impressed with it.

(laughing) You're not that keen on maps like this, right?

No, not really.

So it was just... you thought it was a good deal?

Yeah.

A good deal, so we took it.

Obviously it's a bird's-eye view.

It's a bird's-eye view of Ogden, Utah.

And here is downtown Ogden along here.

And it's an advertising poster for a development called Washington Heights.

And if we look down here to the south, you can see the layout of all the streets.

And you can see here that it says that they've got this "1,200-acre residence park "owned and planned and developed "by the Federal Land and Mortgage Company, Luther S. Foss, General Manager."

Now you're from Idaho, is that right?

Right.

And actually it turns out Luther Foss was from Idaho, but he was a Mormon, and he traveled around the world.

And when he came back, he ended up in Ogden, and became the general manager of this land and mortgage company.

And they decided to do this development, Washington Heights.

And this poster was put out, we figure about 1915.

We couldn't actually date it, but that's about when the mortgage company was going, and it seems like that's when they were developing this.

And it's a fabulous view.

And it shows Ogden.

And Washington Heights, as you can see, is actually just as big and looks just as prominent.

And the idea was this will be the place to move in Ogden.

And it's set against the mountains, which are wonderful.

Now, bird's-eye views like this are actually one of the hottest kind of American prints.

And there's actually a book by a guy named John Reps, which lists every bird's-eye view he could find in the United States.

This is not in it.

Which is interesting-- that means it's quite rare.

Now, obviously it's got serious condition issues.

That affects the value as well.

Now, you paid two dollars for it.

Right.

Do you have any guess what you think it might be worth?

I wouldn't even guess.

(laughing) Two dollars was a big deal for that.

(laughing) All right.

Well, even in this condition, I think in a retail environment that it would probably be priced at about $1,200 to $1,400.

Pretty good investment.

(laughing) I don't know.

It's a lot better now looking than it was before.

(laughing) I brought in my grandmother's Chinese silver set.

And do you know how your grandmother acquired it?

I believe the story is, is that when she went on her honeymoon in 1920 to Shanghai, and commissioned the set.

Where did she get married?

Here in Salt Lake City, I believe.

That's a long journey.

It was.

Back in the 1920s.

However, she married a fellow from the Hawaiian Islands.

Aha.

Well, so she was used to traveling.

Yes.

(chuckles) Well, what we have here is a Chinese export made for the American market.

Mm-hmm.

Silver and carved cinnabar, 72-piece cutlery set.

Cinnabar is a mineral sulfide that they crush and mix with lacquer to make this color.

Oh.

It's prized because of its really intense red-orange color.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what the handles are.

Aha.

And it was made in Shanghai by a very prominent silversmith named Zee Wo.

Z-E-E W-O.

His shop started in the late 19th century and went to about 1930.

So your date of roughly 1920 rings true.

I also wanted to point out the signature of the silversmith.

And we can see that very clearly right here on the back of the fork.

It is signed with a Chinese character, and then it's signed in our alphabet, "Zee Wo."

There was a big taste, a big fad, for things Chinese in America at that time.

Really from the late 19th century up to about the 1930s.

The etched design is really nice.

They have this bamboo design that would have been etched in with a sharper, stronger instrument than the silver.

It's pretty special to have this many pieces, 72 pieces.

This set up here, the 36-piece set in its original box, with the original label... Mm-hmm.

I think the whole 72-piece service is probably worth somewhere in the $5,000 to $7,000 range at auction.

Mm-hmm, that's nice.

(chuckling) There is one person here who I might be able to show this to who might have a little insight.

That guy is the puzzle-- who are these guys that aren't wearing black suits?

That's what I want to know.

I think it would sell in the $300 to $500 range.

Yeah, okay.

Yours had a little condition issue.

I'd say this one at $300 to $400.

$300 to $400.

Yeah, it was not an inexpensive toy in its day.

All right.

Chicago-based, just outside of Chicago.

This was made probably 1905, 1910.

This is their standard glaze.

They said "Tee-co." For me, it's short for terra cotta, so I think it's "Teh-co." I brought my Olympic torch.

In 2002, I got to run the Olympic torch.

My husband nominated me, and I got to do it.

It was surreal.

It was... it was absolutely incredible.

I got to run three and a half blocks, which doesn't sound like very much.

And I practiced and practiced, and then we got out to where I was actually running, and I found out that there was a hill.

So... yeah.

And you know what?

If I'm being honest, I didn't run.

I ran maybe 30 seconds, and then I kind of sauntered.

Because you run with a partner, and my partner kept saying, "Slow down.

"This is the only time "you get to do this-- slow down.

Don't let it go too fast."

When you first go to the place where they ask you to come, they ask you if you'd like to buy the torch.

And at that point I was like, "Well, you know, it's a lot of money."

It was $360.

So I bought it.

And then after I ran the torch, it was like... you'd have to pry this out of my hands to get it from me.

So it was a good thing I bought it.

You have your runner's outfit as well.

I do.

What do you think they're worth?

I don't know, at least $360.

Please tell me.

Well, at auction, we would expect the torch to sell for $2,000... (gasps) ...to $3,000.

No way.

And what about the outfit?

And your runner's outfit.

One size fits all.

Yeah, but they're very collectible, too.

Really?

We would expect that to sell for, at auction, $1,000 to $2,000.

Oh, incredible.

I am...

I really am very surprised.

We believe this is Aaron Delano.

And he would be my fifth great-grand uncle.

He's been... actually been hanging in my grandmother's house when I was young.

And then went to my parents' house.

And now I own him.

And we believe that he is, through both research and word of mouth, that he was the youngest sea captain in the New England area.

He was born in 1767.

And unfortunately, he passed away lost at sea in 1794.

But while he was alive... and we believe he was doing a trade route on the New England coast from Plymouth to Nantucket, up the coast to Turner, Maine, and sometimes to Nova Scotia.

Over the years, we have decided as a family that he's probably haunted.

(laughing) And when I was a teenager in my home, when we got... when my parents got him, they'd hang him in the front stairway.

And I would swear that I could hear him open and close the front door, walk up the stairs, and walk down the hall.

And I would think it was my father or my mother coming home, and I'd go out, and there was no one there.

And my older sister also experienced the... the walking sound in the hallway.

When I was taking the picture down to bring it here, my husband was helping me.

He was on the ladder.

And all of a sudden the ladder slipped and went, "Oh!"

First thing he said was, "Oh, Aaron."

(laughing) We see portraits of people's relatives all the time.

And very, very seldom do we ever see anything with this much going on in it.

It's as much an illustration of his occupation as anything else.

But he's very handsome, he's young.

I love his face and the way that's painted.

And I love the patterned cloth on his vest.

And there he's using the tools of his trade.

That looks like a map, and that instrument is an octant.

Oh, okay.

Which means that it would do an eighth of a circle.

But they were used for navigational purposes.

It's hard to see how good this is right now because it's behind this glass.

Normally, you don't put oil paintings behind glass.

Because this is an oil on canvas.

And we know that it's 18th century.

And we know that it's American.

So you add all that up with what's illustrated in this, and I think you have something that's very extraordinary in terms of what appeals to people who collect Americana and folk art.

We don't know who the artist is.

Because lots of times, these artists were itinerant, and we don't know who a lot of them were.

Just in the condition that it's in right now, it's got paint loss.

If you look right here, I think there's some...

I think there's actually some film on the glass.

Oh, okay.

But most importantly, there's no loss in his face, or in the instruments, and the detail of the painting that I think really makes it valuable.

And so after much conversation at the folk art table, we feel like at an auction, in as-is condition, its value would be $8,000 to $10,000.

Okay, that's good.

That's exciting.

I first got her when I was nine years old.

My dad worked for a drugstore as a pharmacist.

New toys came in.

And I have a feeling that he either brought her home for me because she was brand new, or bought her for my birthday that year.

So I've had her ever since I was nine.

And what do you know about the actual doll?

I know that she is a first edition Barbie doll, because she's the only Barbie doll that has holes in the bottom of her feet.

She came with a stand, with two little prongs that she stood on.

I've kept her all these years.

She was well loved and played with.

And she's just been a treasure of mine.

Okay, I think that's wonderful in itself that you've loved that doll for so many years.

She is indeed a number one Barbie.

And there are three main things that you can tell that she's a number one Barbie.

One is she has very arched, triangular-shaped eyebrows.

They're very distinctive compared to later Barbies.

She also has a white iris that's very distinctive.

Their eyes always look to the side.

And the third thing, which you already mentioned, was that she has the holes in the bottom of her feet.

And it also... the holes are in the shoes, so the two prongs of the stand will hold the doll.

The stand is missing.

Right.

And you said she was well loved, but she's in quite nice condition.

Her wig is a little bit frizzed out.

I think you've combed that...

Sometime in its lifetime you've given a little brush-out there.

I'm sure I did.

And she's also wearing her original bathing suit, which was the main item that they were wearing.

And usually that's what they came with in their box.

Right.

Tell me about the outfit.

This little catalogue had pages and pages and pages of Barbie outfits.

And I remember asking for an outfit for another time, maybe a birthday or Christmas.

And this was the one that my mom picked out for me to have, and so I've kept that all these years also.

Well, these dolls were the brainchild of Ruth Handler, who was with Mattel.

And who would have known what a bonanza that she started.

And she was an extremely good businesswoman.

And she actually got her ideas from a German doll.

Bild Lilli was the German doll.

This was, like we said, the number one Barbie.

It was made in 1959 for only one year.

Wow.

The body is marked 1958.

And they used that same body for several years, so people do get confused when they get a Barbie doll that'll... every time they see 1958, they think it's the number one Barbie.

Mm-hmm.

But it has to have those other features that we talked about.

The number one, number two, and number three Barbies have always stayed very strong.

The number one Barbie, including everything on display here, would probably sell on the market today in a retail setting for $3,500 to $4,500.

Wow.

Oh, I had no idea.

If she were pristine and in the original box, the price would go up a little bit more.

My goodness.

She's well-loved, but maybe I love her even a little more now.

(laughing) You're absolutely right, and they're just decorative.

And they're nice for a Mid-Century Modern house.

They just kind of go, "Yeah."

Told ya!

Red nail polish.

Told everyone they weren't worth much.

He got them in '78.

Oh really?

(laughing) And they've just been sitting around or packed away.

MAN: 1964, '65 era.

WOMAN: Wonderful news!

My husband came home drunk one night, and he paid $100 in a bar for it.

The guy who painted it needed more money to buy more booze.

Well, my mother received this as a wedding gift.

She has Norwegian heritage.

And my paternal grandmother gave it to her.

That would have been in approximately 1966.

So it's been hanging on the wall of my home since I was little.

And then when I grew up and married, my mother passed it on to me.

This is apparently, according to her, King Olaf, who brought Christianity to Norway in the tenth century or so.

And the witch, whom I was a little afraid of as a little girl, represents the former Pagan traditions of Norway.

And he's turning her into a tree.

Well, I think that's consistent with what I know about the story.

I do feel that the tapestry is sort of circa 1900 based on the color palette, and some of the designs in the border, which are very much in the Art Nouveau realm.

I think the body of the piece is really in pretty good condition, and these are quite rare to find in any condition.

So I don't think the small amount of repair is at all a detriment.

Do you have any sense of the value of the piece?

I don't.

I just know it has a lot of sentimental value to me.

Well, I think probably the strongest market for this would be back in Norway.

And I could say conservatively, a $4,000 retail price for a piece like this.

Wow.

Well, it'll be staying in my house, but that's nice to know.

Yes.

I brought in a sword that's been in my family since the Revolutionary War.

It's been in our possession the whole time, and I don't really know too much about it, except that I know that it was at the retreat of the British from Concord and Lexington, and used at Bunker Hill as well.

And there's a name associated with it.

This sword was owned by Colonel Winslow, and was given to Captain Farwell of Dunstable, Massachusetts.

Oh, right.

But research has shown that it's actually from Groton, Massachusetts.

Oh really?

The next town over.

Really?

Yes.

So what we have here is what's called a small sword.

So we've got a silver hilt in a steel blade.

The counterguard is broken off here, but the proof marks that would've proven the country of origin would have been on that guard.

Oh, I see.

Probably English manufactured.

Probably in the 1740s.

If it was used at the Battle of Louisbourg, which is now Cape Breton Island, it would have been 1745, used at that time.

So it's manufactured probably in England, a little earlier than that.

However, with the loss of the counterguard and the touch marks, we can't say for sure.

I've been studying the material culture related to April 19, 1775 for about 40 years.

And this type of small sword is what we see in every identified case.

So the belt you have here looks like it's a linen, possibly all linen or linen-wool mix.

With a clasp, brass clasp here.

It's missing a few pieces that the sword might have hung from.

But it's still, considering the date and time that it's been around, it's still in pretty good condition.

Yeah, it's pretty old.

So Captain Farwell... actually his first name was Henry Farwell.

There's some great information on him.

He was there on the British retreat.

He was also wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The ball went through his body and lodged in his spine, and had to be removed.

He was in Colonel William Prescott's regiment.

Colonel William Prescott, as you may know, was at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and was in command of a lot of the troops there.

So it's a very interesting piece.

Have you ever had it appraised before?

I've never had it appraised.

Okay, normally a sword in this condition would be in the $800 to $1,000 range.

Mm-hmm.

With the connections you have to Captain Henry Farwell, the April 19 history, the Bunker Hill history, I would say the combination of the small sword and the belt, at auction, would be $2,000 to $3,000.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And it could... could do higher than that.

There's a lot of collectors of April 19 and Bunker Hill that, you get two people that want it, it could go even higher than that.

MAN: Well, this is a painting that's out of my grandparents' home.

I believe they bought it on one of their trips to Europe, and that would have probably been somewhere in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

Do you know who the artist is?

I tried to read it once, and I wasn't able to see it very well.

So no, I don't.

It is signed, lower left, as you can see right here.

And it's signed "Frans van Leemputten."

Now, he's a Belgian artist.

He was born in 1850, and he was from an artistic family.

His older brother, Cornelius van Leemputten, is also a known artist who specialized in paintings of sheep and countryside scenes.

Oh.

Now, the younger brother, Frans van Leemputten, he was an artist who was a trained artist, and he later would develop his own style that was heavily influenced by other artists such as Jean-Franois Millet, who is a French Barbizon and realist painter.

And when I saw this painting, I immediately recognized Millet in it.

Really?

And looking later at who the artist was, I could see then how influenced he was by Millet, and how this is a real gem of a painting in terms of Belgian realism.

What we see here is a boy, probably like a peasant boy or a farmer boy sitting on his horse, in the Belgian countryside.

Now, what happened with van Leemputten's career is that he would paint somewhat more kind of city genre scenes.

And then later, because of the influence that he had from the other painters, he went to the countryside and he painted almost always these kind of scenes with these romantic Barbizon tones-- this dark and light, the soft brushwork.

Things that are very related to Barbizon School painting.

And the realism part of it comes into the fact that this is a peasant boy, this is a farmer boy.

It's not... this is real life, this is peasant life, and it celebrates it.

It's a nice scene.

With the dog, it's kind of romantic in that sense.

This would have been in the Campine or Brabantine region of Belgium, where the artist painted a lot.

The medium of this work is oil on canvas.

Although it looks like it was laid on board at some point.

Uh-huh.

It's not dated here, but I would assume that this work would be around 1870s to 1880s.

With auction records of the artist that exist, I would probably put an estimate on this of $8,000 to $12,000 at auction.

But I would not be surprised if it went higher.

Really?

WOMAN: I inherited it from my father because he inherited it from his great-aunty.

We were told it's a Cartier bracelet but I don't know.

It's beautiful, I love it.

Reminds me of her.

When she passed away, somebody had it appraised for the estate, and I believe they appraised it around $9,000.

And I remember them saying something about mine-cut diamonds.

There's a period called Art Deco, and this is one of those classic examples.

You see the shape, it's slightly tapered, there's a lot of geometric design going on here, and these kind of trapezoidal sections.

And then you see over here you kind of got a little pear-shaped section.

Mm-hmm.

And then again it's very strong through here.

It's slightly curved.

And that's a sign of a nice piece of jewelry.

Even though this is all flexible to go around the wrist.

Yeah.

This here is curved for the top of the wrist.

Oh, wow.

When jewelry's designed properly, it lays right on the wrist.

I counted all the diamonds.

If anybody wants to know, there's 180 diamonds in there.

Is that good, is that a lot of diamonds?

Well, I would think the more the merrier.

Right away you see there's two larger ones here.

So they're about three-quarters of a carat each.

And they are old mine and European-cut diamonds.

And then if you come on down there's a couple bigger ones.

They're about a half a carat each.

And that's another thing you see on nice pieces of jewelry.

You know, we see a lot of bracelets.

Older diamonds are very tiny, and they make it look really big.

But here on a piece like this, they are in fact using large diamonds with the small diamonds.

Ooh, good.

Kind of tapers out as the bracelet tapers.

Very nice.

So let's flip it over because you mentioned that you thought it was Cartier.

That's what they said.

For something to be Cartier or anything from a fine jewelry house like that, it's got to be signed.

It's very important today.

And if we look over here, we can see it is in fact signed "Cartier."

For real?

For real.

Why, because you have to look at the signature and see if it's correct.

You know, there are different periods in time.

You'll see here that it's block.

And that's the correct way that they would have signed it in this period, 1925 to 1935.

That's really not enough.

You need more.

Oh no.

So, if you look just above it, you'll see some very tiny numbers.

Yeah, ooh.

These are numbers that Cartier would have used in-house to identify the bracelet.

If your family had purchased this bracelet and you went back to Cartier, they could authenticate it with those numbers.

And then you just look down through the bracelet, you look how it's constructed.

You even see back here, even though in the front, the stones are all round?

Yes.

You notice the shape of what we call the azure cuts in the back?

Yes.

They're all square.

Oh.

And they sat there and cut every one of them out with a saw and hand-finished them and polished them before they set the stone from the front.

The back of the jewelry can be as pretty as the front.

And it made...

So that's what they want to...

They took the extra time to make it extra special, to make it beautiful from the back.

Yes, it lets more light in, so the diamonds sparkle more.

And it also makes it easier to clean it.

Now, those 180 diamonds, they add up.

I measured the sizes, you got approximately 15 carats total weight of diamonds.

That's good, right?

That's good.

Oh!

Yeah, we like that.

(laughing) (laughing) Have you ever worn it?

I wear it... oh, once a year, and my husband ties fishing line through it so it will not fall off.

Because we thought it was perhaps valuable.

So any thoughts on what you think it may be worth today?

You had that big $9,000.

I'm saying...

I'm sticking with the appraisal, original appraisal.

$9,000.

I think you're crazy.

(laughing) No... No, so listen.

Please don't say three dollars.

No, no, no, it's not.

It is real.

So listen, if I had to appraise this, right now today for auction, I would say that this bracelet, easily because of the Cartier name and the strong Art Deco influences, $40,000 to $60,000 at auction.

No way.

N... $40,000 to $60,000.

That's crazy.

For insurance purposes, again today, this would insure for $100,000.

Now I'm... no.

It would insure for $100,000.

Right.

(sighs) Okay.

Seriously?

Cat got your tongue?

Well... (laughing) No way!

Thank you, Aunt Blanche.

(laughing) Thank you.

Nice, nice.

I love it.

It's awesome.

WALBERG: You're watching Antiques Roadshow from Salt Lake City.

Check out Roadshow online at pbs.org/antiques.

There you'll find appraisal updates, podcasts, and web-exclusive video.

Don't go away, the Feedback Booth is coming up right after this.

And now it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.

(chuckling): We had a great time here at the Antique Roadshow.

Antiques Roadshow.

That's right, yes, Antiques Roadshow.

We thought little Martha was going to help us retire early, but hm...

I don't know, I don't think it's going to happen.

And we had so much of this... That we lost our marbles.

We just found out that the knife's good for cutting, the platter's good for serving, and the clock's good for ticking.

Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.

Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.

And we came today with a roll of paper towels that I've had in my house for 40 years, and my husband probably had them before we were married.

We came to Antiques Roadshow to clean up, and we did, $150 for our paper towels.

Woo-hoo!

The jewelry was actually the most valuable from our aunt, who was the madam at the town house of ill repute, and her husband was the sheriff.

So, they had good jewelry.

I brought this old Chinese vase.

Hoped it was from the Ming dynasty, instead it was from the less expensive "fling" dynasty, and we're going to fling it in the trash can as soon as we leave.

I'm a fan of fans, and I brought it to the show.

I thought I'd be rich, but they said no, no, no.

150 is the value, so now I know.

Back to work on Monday morning, got to make some more dough.

WALBERG: I'm Mark Walberg, thanks for watching.

See you next time, on Antiques Roadshow.