Antiques Roadshow

well it was my grandfather's he grew up in l.a was born in 1902 and i don't know whether he was the original person that had it or whether it was even his father just don't know well you probably hear us on the roadshow talk a lot about stiff steif is margarite steif from germany and is the preeminent maker of teddy bears but this is not your run-of-the-mill stiff teddy bear and it is very important that you said 1902 now 1902 is a significant year because richard steiff was the original designer of the steif bear and in 1902 he experimented with how to join a bear with stringing or what we have here is what we call a rod bear this is a 1903 stife rod bear running in the body from one arm to the other arm and in a t fashion to the head is a rod so if you took an x-ray of the bear you would see metal rods now the same for the legs there's a rod running from this leg to that leg now later on they got rid of that rod and just did simple disc joinery it was made in 1903 and was premiered at the leipzig toy fair now it did not run into production for very long and there's some significant differences between a rod bear and a standard early stiff teddy bear and the first one we can talk about is this nose now the nose is not a stitched nose like a later stiff bear it's made out of gutta percha it was soft when it was new it's molded and it looks more realistic like a real bear's nose this is the only model that carried a gutta-percha nose now it has the typical shoe button eyes but what's different about a rod bear is the the head is a little bit lower the ears are lowered down and the way the head sits on the torso is different it's very distinct it has the original five stitched claws it's excelsior stuff which is like wood shavings it has the original felt pads and it's an originally it would have come with an elephant type button it is missing the button and the button would have been right here which was very early and it's it's sad that it's not there it does have a little mohair loss to the head but the body is quite nice and you have the original clothing that your family has made for him which is nice for him and it gives him a lot of character the clothes protected the body if you look at the body he's in better condition than the head so this is all custom made yeah it's homemade clothes so to have that too helps with the appeal of the bear it's the rarest of stiff bears to the the bear market a fair auction estimate would be eight thousand to ten thousand dollars now recently a bear in slightly better condition with all the mohair on the head sold for 17 000 so that shows you how desirable this very early richard steif designed rod bear is that's amazing i'm kind of blown away to be honest it was just something that was up in the hallway closet and not played with or not used and thank goodness for that you