Antiques Roadshow

GUEST: About 20 years ago, give or take, uh... APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST: ...I found it at an auction.

APPRAISER: And how much did you pay for it?

GUEST: Approximately $1,800, as I recall.

APPRAISER: Okay, okay.

GUEST: It just captured my imagination immediately.

And, uh, I just realized, right from the get-go, how important it was, historically significant it was.

Uh, the age really, uh, was stunning to me.

And also the condition.

APPRAISER: Well, it's a really interesting book.

Uh, it's an almanac printed in London in 1599 by an author named Thomas Buckminster.

And, uh, he was quite a well-known vicar of Twickenham, which is a part of Southwest London.

Um, but he wrote a lot of the almanacs at the time of the end of the 16th century.

And these were unusual because most books were quite expensive and only owned by wealthy people.

But almanacs were, um, designed for everyday people, to give them some sense of the calendar, the weather that's coming in an agrarian society, and also prognostications around astrology and religious needs.

Inside the book, we can look at a couple of the pages.

For example, here, you'll see short notes for letting of blood...

GUEST: (laughing) APPRAISER: ...and purging, uh, for various purposes.

These books would often provide these kind of medicinal, uh, guidance and so forth.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And so it's quite interesting and s, somewhat amusing, their suggestions there.

At the end of the book, we can see here the publisher's name, but also this acrostic poem, which, the first letter of the phrase, uh, "semper eadem," or "always the same," which was Queen Elizabeth's motto, is used to create a, uh, unique poem, which, frankly, only exists in this edition.

And apparently this is the only surviving copy.

So it's wonderful to have this bit of ephemeral, uh, poetry from the 16th century in Great Britain.

So it's a very interesting piece of history.

You ever had it appraised?

GUEST: You know, I've never had it appraised.

Um, and I really do not know, uh, what the value is.

With its age, with its history, and the condition that it's in... APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: ...it certainly would appeal.

APPRAISER: (murmurs) (chuckling): Yes, well, you're quite right.

It's in, it is in very, very good condition.

It's complete, it has the full pages.

Um, and one of the reasons I was excited to see it is, in the annals of printing history, almanacs are one of the k, types of books that are very, very rare to survive.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: In fact, Buckminster's editions, there is only one auction record for an example with just three pages in it.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: And the rest of the book is missing.

And in fact, this particular example, um, there's no record, as far as we can tell at this point, of this particular edition existing anywhere.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: There's a copy in Harvard's library of just the zodiac and the, and the calendar in a, in a broadside edition, but not this example.

So...

GUEST: Oh, amazing.

APPRAISER: ...you've got basically a unique survivor, and that's really quite an exciting thing.

And a lot of libraries and collectors would be thrilled to find something like this.

We would recommend an auction estimate, if it was to be sold in a public forum, of $7,000 to $10,000.

GUEST: Oh, that's fantastic.

APPRAISER: If you're not gonna sell it, insure it for around $20,000.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: It's really a, an incredible thing to see.

GUEST: That's... APPRAISER: Thank you so much for bringing it in.

It's very exciting.

GUEST: That's, that's great news.

So appreciate it.