Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

It's an extraordinary association-- the leader of the secession owning a copy of the Constitution of the United States. It's one of the most wonderful items I've seen in a long time. Oh, God!

MARK WALBERG

When Antiques Roadshow visited New Orleans in 2001, our experts found many local treasures created right here in the Big Easy, including this rare jardinire. Will the updated values of this and other fabulous finds give our guests cause for celebration? Let's find out in this fresh look at New Orleans.

WOMAN

This pot, in 1918, was given to my mother as a wedding gift from my paternal grandmother. Well, I wasn't too sure if it was new in 1918, so I checked with Newcomb College, and they told me the Pottery Club of New Orleans probably made this between 1890 and 1895. New Orleans really started to approach the art nouveau about the time of the Cotton Centennial Exposition in 1884, and the Woodward Brothers-- William and Ellsworth-- came here to start teaching painting. And about that time, the New Orleans art pottery formed and the people who worked in New Orleans art pottery was Joseph Myers and George Ohr. And they were doing potting on Baronne Street, which is where this pot was made. So I think this pot predates '95. I think it was late 1880s. Now, I've seen other pots by the New Orleans Art Pottery and they have this sort of embossed work and this sort of claret-colored glaze, but this is pretty special for a lot of reasons. Number one, the artwork is excellent. These are... this is a hand-thrown pot. If we look inside of it, we can see the throwing rings. That's from when it was raised up on a wheel. Those are the potter's fingers. Probably... probably Joseph Myers threw this pot and those are probably his finger ridges on the inside of it. That means that all this decoration is not molded. Somebody got each oak leaf and each branch and each acorn and carved it out and then... They're very exact. They're very exact. And then they painted them. If you go to the Louisiana State Museum, you'll see other pieces of New Orleans Art Pottery, but they're monochrome. This is a five-color piece of pottery. All this beading around these edges, that's all hand tooled. It also has a pretty clear mark on it. If we lift it up here, we can see that it says "New Orleans," where it says "Art Pottery Club" and "Baronne Street," so we know it's a New Orleans Art Pottery. This a precursor to Newcomb College and Joseph Myers actually did the potting for Newcomb for the next 35 years. This is the second piece I've had my hands on in 31 years and the last one I had was a little doodad about that big. I'm going to guess about $15,000, maybe $20,000 for this pot. It's really extraordinary. Everybody said, Don't you dare say, "Wow." (both laugh) But maybe I'll say, "Wow!" You brought in what is a fairly modest-looking little book. Yes. But it's actually quite an interesting piece of local history. It's called the "Blue Book." Tell us how you came by this. A few years ago, one of the neighbors had passed away, and they pretty much cleared the contents of his house, and I had rummaged through some of the boxes that were remaining on the sidewalk. I'll pick it up and we can look at it a little more closely. It's got some advertising on the back, et cetera. And, as you know, this is one of the famous guides to the Storyville District, here in New Orleans. The notorious red-light district-- a part of New Orleans history. Yes. But I thought it might be interesting to show the Roadshow viewers a few of the pages of this classic, if we can call it that. It's full of ads, and the ads are for things like, "Raleigh Rye," which is a very popular brand at the time. The main body of the book, though, is a long, long list of young ladies. Yes. With their name and their address. "May O'Brien, 1547 Iberville." "Viola Morris, 209 North Franklin." And this book makes no bones about what it is. I mean, it's a guide to sporting houses and loose women. Yes. "Diana and Norma. "Why visit the playhouses "to see the famous Parisian models, when one can see the French damsels, Norma and Diana." Here's another one that was sort of interesting, The Cairo... Run by someone whose nickname is "Snooks." "Snooks has an array of beautiful girls, "who are everlastingly on the alert for a good time, "and her Oriental dancers are among our cleverest entertainers." Because of the nature of this book, this was not something that stayed in people's libraries very long; it was an ephemeral thing; a lot of people were embarrassed to have it around, I'm sure threw them away. It's actually quite a rare book. There are different editions done. I think the earliest ones were in the 1890s, those are exceedingly rare. This is one of the later ones-- there's no date here, I think this was done about 1915. The last copy I was able to track down at auction sold for more than $2,000, some years ago. Wow. My guess on this is it's worth somewhere between $3,500 and $4,500. My goodness. Not bad for something you picked from the garbage, right? Pretty good find. Most of them were made after 1850-- most of them in the 20th century in Colombia and Ecuador-- And in six years of doing the Roadshow, this is probably the 150th or 160th pair I've seen, and everybody thinks they're 400 years old and they came from the Conquest. As it is right now it has a value of a few hundred dollars. If you get this resilvered and brought into tiptop shape, you'll have a $3,500 dresser set. My goodness. That's... that's amazing. The main question always is, is it actually old? The top has shrunk in one direction, but not the other. When you have an old piece of wood, that tends to be the case. It's probably a $3,000 or $4,000 table. It's a Southern piece, Jefferson Davis's letter of marque, which basically authorizes private vessels to act as pirates for the Confederacy. This is 1861. At the time, the Confederate Navy were desperate to have private individuals come in with their own ships and raid Northern shipping and protect the South from invasion from... by the sea. You said you got it on the Internet. Can I ask you what you paid for it? About $1,800. Eighteen hundred dollars. Well, my colleagues hadn't seen anything like this, I haven't seen anything like this. Your own research said there were perhaps 50 of these done. We see these letters of marque and privateers' letters from the Revolutionary War, from the War of 1812 quite often, but a good one from Confederate... signed by Jefferson, from the Civil War and this early, I'd say, if we took this up to auction, we could get between $15,000 and $20,000 for it. So I think your hunting on the Web did very, very, very well. Thank you very much.

MAN

During World War II, my father was in army intelligence, and as part of that, he was one of the first people into Manila after the Japanese left; and with other services that he provided to the Filipinos at the time, at the end of the war, he was asked if he would like a gift, and he asked that he get a painting of a typical Filipino scene. And this has been in our house ever since then.

APPRAISER

Well, this is by a well-known Filipino artist named Fernando Amorsolo. It's signed and dated 1945. And Amorsolo, as a child, painted watercolor postcards, which he would sell at a bookstore to help support his family. He studied abroad in the '20s and he won his first art award at the New York World's Fair. In the '30s, '40s and '50s, which is when your father acquired the painting, it was really the peak of his career. Amorsolo is really known for showing peasants in traditional settings and doing everyday activities, but he tends to idealize them and put them into beautiful natural surroundings. And he's very skilled at showing the effects of light. And you can see here, this kind of dappled sunlight that hits the hay and the grasses and gives a nice effect. He really obtained a lot of awards and a great reputation during his lifetime, and he is considered one of the most famous artists in the Philippines. Now, have you ever had any kind of discussion of value or... No, just... or seen any evidence of what's happening with his market? No, I have no idea of the artist. And it's just, as I say, always been on the wall in the house. Well, I think this is a very nice example of his work and that it might bring between $30,000 and $50,000 at auction. (laughs) Oh, wow. That's incredible. That's absolutely incredible. I almost didn't bring it because it wasn't really an antique. You know, it's not that old, 1945.

MAN

I did a little work through the Internet to try to get some information on Howdy Doody itself. Buffalo Bob trademarked a lot of his items between 1947, I believe it was, and '51. Correct. This is one of his trademarked dolls. Howdy Doody was really one of the first to do children's educational television. And my generation, I'm used to, you know, the Captain Kangaroo, and a lot of the baby boomers really remember the Howdy Doody character. And as the cameras were rolling over here, everybody's humming the song, and I love that. It's that nostalgia I love. On the box, it gives us some other clues that it was the Effanbee doll company that produced this. Now, are you familiar with the Effanbee doll company? I... I am, from the standpoint of trying to find some information on the Internet. Right. And I'm actually contacting the company to try to get some information about this particular doll, and there was no success. Without any help, right. No. Well, most of these companies, they weren't really concerned about the secondary value of these particular items. They would make these dolls, push them out, bring in the next line and look to the year ahead. So, Effanbee is an American doll company. They were wonderful. They made a lot of really great dolls, and this being one of them. One of the problems, though, with composition is the crazing, which you can see, that is happening on the face and all through the head. So you want to be careful to store this in a good environment. Now, how do you have this stored? Well, I got the doll in 1973, and, um, he remains in this box, flat on his face because I learned a tip from the Antique Roadshow, that with dolls that have the sleepy eyes, you should store them face down to keep the mechanism from getting locked up and ruined. Very good. And he stays in this box, like I said, inside another box, locked up in the corner of the room, and that's where he sits. Wonderful, and you were telling me this is only, what, the tenth time... About the tenth time since 1973 he's been out of his box. Well, the nice thing about this is that it also has the original hat and all of the original clothes and in this kind of condition, with the original box, I would put a value of about $1,000 to $1,200 on this piece, because it is in such great condition. Oh, that's great. That's really great.

WOMAN

I was living in Lagos, Nigeria, in '75. And a friend had seen it on the roadside and it had fallen over, and a few months later he went looking for it, and said he thought I'd like it, because he knew I liked "junk." So he carried this heavy thing up, and surprised us with it, and we've had it ever since, and just love it. First of all, I will say a lot of people ask why this is in English, and that, of course, is because colonialism has been in Nigeria for... for a very, very long time. Let's see what we can have taken care of. "Looks after pregnant women till day of delivery, children's illness, hysteria..." That's a good one. "Any trouble which upset men's movements." Well, moving right along, "Eye trouble... "Prepared against one turn, back to the doer..." It says, "Any poison prepared against one..." There we go. "turn back on the doer." Well, do you have any vendettas or anything? None. I have great friends. So what do you think the sign is worth? To me, it's priceless, but I have no idea. I really don't. So no one has looked at it? It's a "one of," I know. Easily, I think, this sign on the market, in the folk art market, is $500 to $700. Okay. And you can see this. "Bad luck changes to good." So nothing will ever happen to you that's bad. Oh, I'm glad to hear that. The humidor is made by Dorflinger, who is known as a very high quality American brilliant cut glass manufacturer. $1,500 to $2,500 very easily. Beautiful piece of American brilliant cut glass. Great. Bought it at a garage sale. Three bucks. Your vase actually is made by the Peters & Reed Company, the predecessor to the Zane Pottery Company in Zanesville, Ohio. Would you be surprised if I said it would bring somewhere in the $800 to $1,200 range at auction today? Surprised and happy. It dates to the 1890s, 1880s, and its value would probably be $4,000 to $6,000. Oh, my...

APPRAISER

This particular image is one of the 20th century's icons. So many people know this image, they may not even know why they know it. My sister, who lives in East Tennessee, she found these in the trash. She found it in the trash? Uh-huh. And then she gave it to you? Yeah, she had several and she let me pick from them. Well, A, the Normandie is a very famous ship from the classic era, the 1930s Art Deco era. The artist of this poster is Cassandre, who was one of the most famous French graphic designers in the 1930s. He did posters that you would... people just recognize all over the place. They've really become part of the public consciousness and the visual vernacular. This Normandie poster, which was printed in 1935, we've sold several times at auction in the past couple of years, and each time it's brought upwards of $10,000. Oh, yeah?

MAN

They were given to me by my parents, who bought them in Paris shortly after World War II. They were decorators, and they went to Paris to go to school. Okay, has anyone ever told you anything about them, what they are or who made them or... I know they say "Lalique" and to me, the mystery, let's say, of the little groove on the top. I don't know their model number. Well, the little groove on top-- and I'll just tip it down a little so we can see it better-- it's there for a reason, of course. They are not, as they may appear, candlesticks. They're simply called "supports," and the correct title of them is "caryatid," as you've discovered, support caryatide, and they were designed to be placed around a centerpiece on a table, and this little groove, rather cleverly, would hold a garland of flowers, natural flowers, which would be tied together rather like a daisy chain and then garlanded throughout them, perhaps in an arrangement of six or eight or so. They are by Lalique, Ren Lalique. We can see the signature on the bottom of this one, "R. Lalique, France," and they were made in the early 1920s. They were displayed in what is perhaps Lalique's most triumphant affair, the Paris Exhibition of 1925. It's an exhibition from which we get the term Art Deco, in fact, and I think these are an extremely Art Deco pair of supports, or ornaments. They're also very rare. They're in Lalique's signature, clear and frosted, satin-finished glass. They're in very high Art Deco style with, you might say, an Egyptian taste throughout them-- very elegant, very refined, important pieces of Lalique. Now, tell me, have you ever had them valued, or has anyone ever suggested... No, I've never had them valued. I've only read a magazine article on a pair of collectors in New England, who... and the article on them specifically photographed a pair of caryatids like this. Okay. But no valuation was assigned to them. Since there's such a wide range of valuations within Lalique, I figured I'd bring them down. Lalique can start at a few hundred dollars-- even the older Lalique-- and go well up. These are in the higher range. I would say today, in a good auction-- they're very much desired by collectors-- they would be estimated to sell for at least $30,000 for the pair and maybe as much as $40,000 or even more. So, great pair, and very exciting to see here in New Orleans. Excellent. Much higher than actually what I had thought. More in line with what I would like. Well, wrap them carefully when you leave. I shall.

WOMAN

Well, I got it from my father, who inherited it through his mother's family.

APPRAISER

What do you know about the Gothic Revival? Um, you know, just that I like it. Yes. And I have two more hall chairs that are smaller and Gothic Revival. It's interesting to me that the Gothic Revival is so strong in the South. You know, England almost went with the South during the Civil War, because of the economy. Cotton was very important to the culture there. Those were the economic reasons, but for the emotional reasons, the Gothic Revival, I think, tied the South to England more even than the North. It was an important style in architecture as well as furniture. The statehouse in Baton Rouge is in the Gothic Revival. Right, yeah. And yet it was in these great Greek Revival houses that they furnished them with the Gothic Revival. For example, we know that there are a cluster of these chairs that have turned up in plantation houses in Natchez, as well as in Vicksburg. We call these hall chairs because they had no upholstery, they lined the walls like sentinels, and... And they're not very comfortable. No. And foul-weather gear would be thrown on them often when the people returned. Right. The seat raises up, so you can put things inside, which I do. I store stuff in there. We think this chair has a value--

because several have gone to museums recently

Los Angeles, Winterthur, Dallas, Milwaukee-- of about $25,000. Goodness. Thank you for bringing it in... Well, thank you. and sharing it with us. Well, my dad was a member of the Rex Carnival Organization, here in New Orleans, before he passed away, and he collected a number of items from the organization, some of which I have here today. They are favors that were given to members of the organization over the years. Most of the items you see here date from 1907 to 1911. These favors, especially from Rex, one of the oldest and most venerated krewes, started in the 1880s. So the ones that you have here from 1910, 1911, 1907 are very early and wonderful examples. These things were actually given to the ladies at the dances. They were called "call-outs," and usually a member like... such as your grandfather would buy them in order to send them to the lady beforehand, to invite them to the dance. And sometimes they were given out at the balls, but obviously an inkwell or letter openers that are heavy like this would certainly have been sent beforehand. One of the neat things about Rex was even though the women were costumed and knew their names, the men always wore masks. So they never knew who they were dancing with and who gave them these wonderful favors in the first place. These are in about as good condition as you can get. They don't have a huge value because they certainly have been made in very large quantities. But something like the letter openers, especially in this condition, sell for about $100, $150 each, and the inkwells and the box sell for between about $250 and $300. The doubloons are the coins that they normally throw off of the parade route floats, and this is a good example of what a front of a Rex coin would look like. H. Alvin Sharpe, who actually designed this insignia, has signed this coin, so it's a wonderful example and so probably has a value of about $100. But I think what I love about what you brought is it's something that's so indigenous to this area and most of our viewers would never get to see otherwise.

WOMAN

Well, these pictures were at an old home. The lady had a collection of many different things, and I was looking through the pictures. And then I saw a book on Storyville that she had.

APPRAISER

Right.

WOMAN

Well, I made the connection of E.J. Bellocq, who was a photographer.

APPRAISER

Right. I started matching the pictures with the... the photographs that were in the book and I bought a number of the pictures. Well, indeed, what you have are a group of images that are by a photographer who practiced in the Storyville district of New Orleans. And that area, which was known for its red light district, has a kind of interesting history to it. Apparently, at the turn of the century, Alderman Stanley Story hoped to clean up the waterfront and remove prostitution. Instead, this area, Storyville, was named after him and it became a community where prostitution was legalized. Here, for example, is the entryway to the house of prostitution, and it's really quite marvelous in terms of the range of female beauty that introduces the gentlemen to the trade. Lee Friedlander was the photographer who discovered the glass-plate negatives, in the 1960s, 1970s. Friedlander realized the inherent beauty and craft of these images, and began to make photographic prints from the plates himself, because there were so few vintage prints available. In terms of a value, do you have any idea what they might bring? No. Well, frankly, I'm a little uncertain, too, because tests would need to be done to determine whether or not these photographic images are, in fact, from the period that Bellocq worked, which was 1900 to 1920. Individually, these photographs would be in the $2,000 to $4,000 range, if each photograph was made at the time that the negative was generated. If they turn out to be photographic prints made by Lee Friedlander, the value is going to be more in the $600 to $900 range. Either way, it's a good investment for the 75 cents you told me you purchased each print at, so thank you for bringing them in. Thank you. This toy is a contemporary toy. We can tell by the quality of the rivets. But what's curious is somebody has figured out that we love original boxes. So they get some cardboard and they staple it up like this and they age it up and they make it dirty. But it is a contemporary toy with a brand-new box. The centerpiece is late-1920s American. And the bracelet probably originally had a cloth band and was replaced in the late '30s, early '40s in woven platinum and diamonds. That's not a bad inheritance, is it? No! It's Chinese. It is a 19th-century piece, as opposed to being an earlier piece, which is what it's copying. Earlier pieces would have been a little bit heavier. The value's about $1,500. Ooh! Yeah.

MAN

She and my father were in New York for a convention and she happened to be in an elevator and she recognized Cassius Clay in the elevator. And she thought it would be a nice idea to ask him for an autograph for her husband. And, um, so that's what she did. And he happened to autograph it to my father from Cassius Clay. Said he was going to be the next champ by knocking Sonny Liston out in the sixth round. You can see he already had the bravado going, right? 1963. It's an incredible photograph. Um, as you can see, it's an early, early signature, "Cassius Clay." After the fight, which took place February 25, 1964, he changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Okay. So basically, if you didn't get him as Cassius Clay between 1960, 1963, he wasn't signing that way. Ah. So, what else is great, of course, he's predicting he's going to be the next champ, which, of course, he was. He was a huge underdog, right? Exactly. He even gives the round-- Liston in six. Well, he didn't knock him out in six, but he knocked him out in seven. So he was pretty close. He really was, right. Phenomenal signature, incredible inscription. I see, you know, it's personalized to your father, which makes it even better for you, but on the open market, people don't like things personalized. But that's okay-- nonetheless, it's still $1,500 to $2,000. What?! And it's a wonderful, wonderful piece. It's one of the best Cassius Clay signatures I've ever seen. Fantastic. It's just incredible. My father was a book lover and this was part of his library. And he had told us that he had acquired this book, entitled The Constitution, and it had belonged to Jefferson Davis.

APPRAISER

As we see up here. And he told me that he thought that was extremely important-- that this book, entitled The Constitution, should have come from the library of Jefferson Davis. Absolutely, the man who seceded. Yes. And we have various signatures inside the book to document this. I think we have two distinct forms of them. To bring... to come to the title page first, I'm always a little suspicious of pencil, and I think that maybe somebody has added this signature later on. My colleagues and I, here on the show, have looked at these signatures, and we think that this is in the handwriting of his wife, Varina Davis, who was born in 1826 and died in 1906. Now, Varina Davis took over a lot of Jefferson Davis's correspondence, throughout his life and his political career, and we think that this is Varina's hand and that this is Varina's hand. As far as value is concerned, if this had been authentically signed and owned by Jefferson Davis himself, I would have thought that an auction estimate of... in the region of $50,000 would be appropriate, but being that it's in the hand of his wife-- and that therefore makes this what we call a family association copy, as opposed to an individual's association copy-- I would put the value of this at $15,000 to $20,000, for an auction estimate. My own interest, though, is in the history. The real interest in the book is that there was some controversial interpretation of the Constitution. Absolutely. And if Jefferson Davis was... had studied his Constitution and still felt like it was constitutionally possible, uh, to secede from the Union, to me, that's the great historical interest of the book, not any monetary value. Yes, it's an extraordinary association-- the leader of the secession owning a copy of the Constitution of the United States, which he broke. Exactly.

MAN

I inherited it two years ago, and it was my great-great- grandfather's originally.

APPRAISER

Now, what are these papers you brought in? Well, these are in my great-great- grandfather's handwriting. He went through each piece of marble and labeled which type of marble it was. Amazing, I see here this marble top here has the bird-- here's the bird. We've got this bellflower and leaf, and then the flower. It's all depicted exactly... These are listing the marbles here? Right, he has numbers and it corresponds with what type of marble it is. And do you know where the table was made? Well the paper says, "Florentine mosaic," so I'm guessing Italy. Okay, great, exactly. Well the top was made in Italy. It's a Florentine top. This table is Gothic, it's what we call Gothic Revival. And the Gothic style was popular in England and Europe, it's been for centuries and centuries. There was a Gothic Revival in the 18th century, looking back to the 12th and 13th centuries. We see these, lancet arches; we see these bundled colonnettes. All of these designs you see in early medieval architecture. We don't see a lot of Gothic furniture in America; it's extremely rare. England was the most popular place for Gothic. But in America, it was mostly architecture that got popular versus the furniture. So you don't know where this is made, the base? No, I do not. Well, stylistically, this is made in New York City. And we know that, because there's... there are pieces made by Alexander Roux-- which is R-O-U-X, it's spelled-- a Frenchman, migr, who came over to America and worked. Also A.J. Davis worked and furnished a wonderful house on the Hudson, called Lyndhurst, in the Gothic style. Most of these tables are mahogany. This is actually rosewood, and you can see the dark, darkish stripes in it, typical of rosewood. There's a couple little chips here and there, which are fine. You can see the traces of where they were. But it's amazing it's got its original finish. We usually call these tables "specimen tables," because here we have all of these different types of marble, which are... which are specimens of these 80 types of Italian marble. I'm going to hand that to you. And, in fact, here, written on here, your great... great- great-grandfather wrote descriptions of the varieties of marble in the chess table. Most people thought these were just used for specimens of marble, and squares were the best format. Because it has a small size, original finish, it's rosewood... The documentation is incredible. We know it was made for your great- great-grandfather, on his birthday, 1845. If I were to put an insurance figure on this table, I would put about $175,000 on it. You've got to be kidding me. I'm not kidding you. That's incredible, I was thinking like $2,000. $2,000? That's what you thought? That's what I thought. You had... your family just.. they ordered the best table they could possibly buy at the time and they had great taste. Wow! Well, thank you very much. That's incredible. You ever play chess on this? No, but I used to climb all over it. Used to climb on it? Yeah, not anymore.

WOMAN

We have a very, very close friend who gave it to my husband and I when we first got married as a wedding gift. And I knew nothing about it. I know by reading the name on the bottom that it says "Rembrandt," but I never could be quite sure. So it's been hanging on my wall and I've always wanted to know something about it. Well, I looked at it very closely. You actually allowed me to take it out of the frame you brought it in and I can assure you that it is an etching by Rembrandt. And you pointed out his name here. His signature is in the plate, Rembrandt. The F is Latin for "fecit," meaning "Rembrandt made this," and then you see the date here, 1654, is when it was made. The title of this print is The Virgin and Child with the Snake and the Cat, and you might see the Virgin and the Child immediately, but I'll point out the snake, right below her, there. Underneath the Virgin's foot you can just make out the head of the snake. Yes. And over here, curled up sort of, right next to the chair, is the cat. Okay. And you also see the figure of Joseph here, off to the side, looking in through the window. Yeah. The snake and the cat most likely represent the Holy Family's flight into Egypt-- two animals representing the sort of exotic Middle East. And normally, you don't see that in a representation of the Virgin and Child, so that's probably what Rembrandt is pointing out here. Now, the interesting thing about this print is that it's a first state of two. A state is any time that there's been a change or addition to the etched plate and in this case, you have this blank circle up here. That blank circle only appears in the first state. In the second state, Rembrandt etched more lines in there to cover that circle up. That's how we know that's a first state, because of that blank patch. We also looked at it closely and flipped the paper over. I held it up to the light and I could see it had a watermark on it. And the watermark is a foolscap watermark, which signifies that it's a 17th-century paper. So we've identified this as an early print, a first state of two by Rembrandt, that it was printed in his lifetime, which gives it some importance. Rembrandt sold his plates during his lifetime and they survived him after his death and they were printed from by other publishers. Those are of significantly less value than the lifetime impressions. I see. Something along the lines of a second state printed a hundred years after Rembrandt's death would sell for about $3,000 to $5,000. But your print here again, in the good condition that it's in, being printed in the 17th century by Rembrandt himself is worth about $15,000 to $20,000. These scrapbooks were given to me by an elderly aunt. She never threw anything away and collected lots and lots of things and I think I inherited some of those characteristics from her. So she felt that they would be safe and in good hands if she gave them to me.

APPRAISER

Now, you brought four books. When you first put these down on my table, I opened it up and judging by this front page, I felt this was what's called a studio yearbook. Every movie studio would put out a yearbook at the beginning of the year, telling all the theater owners what films were coming up and they would put in a sample ad and information. Then I flipped the page and of course there it was. There's the first film that they were going to release that year, the information about it. But then when I flipped the page again, I found this collection of reviews from motion picture trade papers. Somebody obviously took these pages and pasted in reviews. A film annual like this is not tremendously valuable unless there's a famous film in it. Then we come to the 20th Century book. This is 1934 and 20th Century was one of the big presentations in 1934. And I turn the page and I see that someone here has not only pasted something in that wasn't there before, they've pasted in a part of a giant lobby card, so my interest was piqued. And here's the usual clippings as in the other book, which is not very financially rewarding. And then we come to It Happened One Night, which was another big film of 1934. As a matter of fact, it won more Academy Awards that year than any film had won up to that point. And what somebody had pasted in here were the lobby cards for It Happened One Night. Now, these were 11x14 cards that used to come in a set of eight. They were put in the lobby of the movie theater in order to tell you what was coming the next week. The problem is that somebody has trimmed these lobby cards and reduced their value significantly. This particular lobby card I had at an auction two years ago and it sold for $1,100 on its own. In this condition, it would only sell for a few hundred dollars. But then I came to this and these are called jumbo lobby cards. They're very unusual. They were only made for a brief period in the 1930s and none are known to exist from It Happened One Night. (chuckles) And you have... Six of them. They came in sets of eight, also, so there's two missing. But that really doesn't make any difference because jumbo lobby cards invariably sell by the each. I've never known a complete set to come on the market from any film because only... only a few hundred of these were produced for each film because very few theaters had the frames for them. They had the frames for the 11x14s but not for these large ones. Only the big, downtown, first-run movie theaters were able to show these. They haven't come to the market in any format and even with the... with the trimming, you'd have to be looking at somewhere about $1,200 to $1,500 for each of these jumbo lobby cards. Oh, God. So it's one of the most popular films of the '30s for collecting paper. The poster goes for $14,000 to $15,000 and the jumbo lobby cards in... in proportion would sell in that range of $1,000. So what do you think my collection is worth? Well, with the... with the trimmed cards and with this and six of them, about $10,000 to $12,000 because there's two more books of material there, too. Yes. It's a great collection. Wow! My husband is probably dying at this point. Collectors call them shooflies. You know, they're early... to keep the flies away from the pies and the fried chicken at a picnic or on the table at night, In that condition, you're still looking at about $300 to $500. They're very, very popular and they're fun. It's not your typical Newcomb in that the later varieties tend to be too old. This is more early. It's probably worth around $15,000 to $17,000. On a beautiful early, early piece. It's actually a Christmas card that was sent in 1955, by Lyonel Feininger. And I would say at auction, an estimate of $3,000 to $5,000 wouldn't be... Oh, wow. I'm thrilled. I paid a dollar for it, I have to say. You did well, you did well. When I think of food in New Orleans, the first thing I think of is oysters, and it's absolutely appropriate that you have brought in, more or less the holy grail of oyster plates to us, here in New Orleans, at one of the oyster capitals of the world. This particular plate, as you're aware, was made by Minton. It has a datemark on the bottom. You inquired about the date, and we were able to decipher the datemark, which is not able to see-- it's so tiny-- but this piece was made in 1857. This particular piece is very interesting, in that it has a mechanism which allows it to spin and turn to serve oysters around the table, and these mechanisms on this particular piece are usually gone. These don't turn up very often, but they certainly don't turn up very often with that type of mechanism. One reason that this is such a great oyster plate, it holds over two dozen oysters and, also, it appeals to majolica collectors. Because of its rarity, its age and its great design, this piece usually sells for between $10,000 and $15,000. That's a lot of money for an oyster plate, and you'd have to eat a lot of oysters to maybe justify having a piece that expensive.

WOMAN

We have no idea who it is. My husband said just wrap it up carefully, because the back is falling apart. I said I would take very good care of it, so I brought it down, not knowing a thing about it and so...

APPRAISER

Well, it's interesting, the painting. The artist is a fellow by the name of Ignacio Lon y Escosura-- he's a Spanish artist. He was born around 1840 and lived to about 1900. But this guy, in this painting, pulls out all the stops. He's really showing off what he can do with paint. Hard to even believe it's paint. From this beautiful silk dress, here, to all the little jewels, and the jewel-box and the mirror, and jewels in her headdress. And then he even goes on further and puts on an elaborately colored Persian carpet on there. Another thing he's done is he's done it on wood, on a panel, rather than on canvas. Now, the wood-- hard surfaces like panels and copper-- allow the paint to set up and be more jewel-like, The canvases, they sort of absorb into, and you get a duller finish. This... he chooses panels to give you this almost jewel-like finish here. This is the kind of painting, also, that would be very popular in New Orleans. New Orleans, as a town, loves its 19-century things and particularly things, paintings like this. This fellow is really loved and adored by Spaniards and Spanish collections, and when these come up on market, they're crazed for them, they really bid them up. A painting like this would-- even though it's this small-- would go for about $10,000 to $15,000. Wow! Hmm, okay, that's... Well, they say good things come in small packages. This is, this is certainly one.

MAN

It's a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball, authenticated 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers baseball. As most people know, 1955 was the only year the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series, which makes the ball special in and of itself.

APPRAISER

Absolutely. The ball arrived to me by gift from Mel Ott. Mel Ott is a Hall of Fame baseball player who was from the New Orleans area. He was a very close friend of my father. My father was his CPA. And Mel presented the ball to me and my brother after the World Series in 1955. I have authentication. My brother and I received a postcard from Mel, dated August the first of 1955. Mel says, "If I can get some sort of a souvenir, "such as an autographed baseball or something, I'll send you that." And even though I was a kid, I do remember it as being a big deal. It was the only time I ever actually met the gentleman. Unfortunately, Mel died three years later in a tragic auto accident, not far from New Orleans. A lot of times we get asked, how do we authenticate baseballs? What do we look for? And you've given us the highest level of provenance that you could possibly. So when you give me this story, I look and see the ball and try to see if there are any other clues. Now, in 1955, there's a player who played one year; I think you know, Frank Kellert. He did. Frank Kellert's signature is right here on the ball, it dates it right to 1955, as well as the story that you've given us. Another very, very important thing that a lot of people don't know is that Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson and Carl Erskine had a ball boy who used to sign for them. Many, many people have come to us with 1955 Dodgers balls and they say, "This is real, this is real." And yet the secret is there's one panel that has Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Carl Erskine all together. Looking at your baseball, you have Jackie Robinson here, down below you have Carl Erskine and on another panel you have Roy Campanella. So, this was definitely not a clubhouse, beyond the fact, of course, that Mel had to go in and get them himself. Actually, I did not know that. Well, the other difference with this ball, for me at least, is that the ball is actually signed by Mel Ott. Well, and that is another way of looking at value. I don't know if Mel Ott ever signed another World Series ball. If he did, there's only a handful. So here you have the whole 1955 Dodgers, with the exception of Duke Snider, I might add.

But you have Hall of Famers here

Pee Wee Reese, Campanella, Jackie Robinson, and someone who should be in the Hall of Fame, Gil Hodges. And Sandy Koufax, also. And Koufax in his rookie year. An auction estimate, with all this together, is minimum $4,000 to $6,000, and it really could be the sky's the limit because of the perfect provenance you have for everything here. That's great. Well, my wife's aunt gave her her library when she moved out of her home and in several of the books, we... we found this. And when I opened it up, this map was folded in it and after I opened up several folds, I said, "Oh, my goodness. "It's not like the repro we have on the wall. "It's actually white with nice colors and pastels." So you had a reproduction of this same image. Correct. Then you had it taken out and then put into this frame, is that correct? I folded it back up immediately and we brought it to a restorer and had her do this with it. Now, you know a fair bit about this map. Well, I think it was produced in 1858 by Adrien Persac. He was a local surveyor who did colored renderings of plat maps of the city and homes and obviously this. Well, he was actually born in France but came over to this country in the middle of the century and kicked around a bit and ended up, pre to the Civil War, hired by the publisher of this map, Norman-- his name is down here-- who published this map in 1858 to document-- to survey-- the Mississippi River. And what this map shows, starting down here in New Orleans, is it shows the Mississippi River going up like this and it's kind of like a Triple-A strip map. It then goes down here and continues up to Natchez. And what you end up with is one of the most important pre-Civil War documents of this whole area, because it documents all the owners along the river. And as you go up, it's got their plantations and their names and everything like that, and that kind of information is fabulous. Also because he was an artist, he also had some wonderful firsthand drawings down here. You have a cotton plantation, you have a fabulous view of New Orleans and over here you have a sugar plantation. And those are based on firsthand drawings. They're not made-up views. Now, all of that gives us great history. But besides history, of course, value comes from scarcity, and as you know, this is very scarce. One of the reasons-- they did do the reproduction but the original is very scarce-- is because it's a folding map. And folding maps are on that very thin paper. And I'm glad that you found out what it was and rather than keep opening it and closing it, which of course is how these things tear, you had it mounted to preserve it. If I had this in my shop in Philadelphia, which isn't the best place to sell it, but still it's desirable enough we could sell it, I would probably put about $4,500 to $5,000 on it. Wow.

MAN

Well, actually, I got it in trade with a very good friend of mine.

APPRAISER

What did you trade? I traded a nice, old bottle that he was interested in. What do you know about it? I know very little, or actually, I should say nothing, about it, other than it's a walking stick and a gun. Well, t's one of the most wonderful items I've seen in a long time. It's a... it's a gun cane, it's a pistol cane. It was made by one of the premier gunsmiths in Philadelphia, whose name was Jacob Kunz, and he worked from about the beginning of the 19th century up to the 1850s or '60s. And this is extremely rare. His name is right under the hammer-- J. Kunz-- and it's a later spelling of his name. He originally spelled it K-U-N-T-Z, and this is spelled K-U-N-Z. And it's got beautiful workmanship up here. It's a lovely gun, and let me tell you a bit about Jacob Kunz. Jacob Kunz made air guns, which are very rare. And Meriwether Lewis took one of Jacob Kunz's air guns on their Lewis and Clark expedition. Is that right? There're only eight air guns known. They're all at the Virginia Military Institute now. They were formed by a man in Philadelphia... collection... who gave his collection to VMI, but they're extremely rare, and this is extremely rare. This is just a... a great, great item, beautifully made by a premier craftsman. Tell me now what... what was the bottle worth that you traded? Well, my friend valued the bottle at about a thousand to $1,500. Well, I'll tell you, I think you did all right, because I think this really is worth $10,000 to $15,000. $10,000 to $15,000? $10,000 to $15,000. I'm sure my friend will be contacting me.

WALBERG

I'm Mark Walberg. Thanks for watching. See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.