Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

This is a clock that I acquired from my parents. It's brass and marble. The clock originated from Budapest, Hungary, a number of years ago. My father was an Olympic skier, and my father skied for the Hungarian Olympic team in 1948. After the Olympics, the entire Olympic team defected from St. Moritz, Switzerland, which is where the Olympics were held. When my father defected, my father's mother wanted to follow and come to the United States also, but it didn't quite work out that way in the beginning. So my father was arrested and my grandmother and grandfather were incarcerated, but through some negotiations, they were set free. My grandmother decided she was going to come to the United States, so she took some of her belongings and had them smuggled out of Budapest, which had become a Communist country, to England. And so once everything arrived in England-- At the time, I wasn't sure who, but I found out later it was a cousin, because my father was an only child. So my father came to the United States. My grandmother came through the underground and they wanted to get the stuff back from England. There was a lot of discussion because the cousin didn't want to give any of the stuff up. So after my grandmother passed away, my father, finally convinced him to send something that had meaning to my father, something that reminded him of his parents, and it turned out to be the clock. Six years ago, my mother passed away and my father finally said, "If you want the clock, you can have it."

APPRAISER

Well, this clock is of European origin, probably made about 1880. They made these clocks for about a 30-year period, up until the First World War, really. They were very, very popular clocks. When you ordered clocks like this originally, oftentimes you could buy them with side accoutrements, whether they be candelabras or vases. We don't know whether this clock was originally purchased that way, but you had that option.

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

The base is marble, columns are marble, obviously built for show. The case itself and the decorations are brass and designed to run eight days. Very, very good quality. Probably either Austrian or French-made. The reality is the movements are very, very similar, and the companies that made them were making clock movements for people that went ahead and cased them themselves.

GUEST

Is there any way to find out through the serial numbers where it really came from?

APPRAISER

There is, but it really doesn't affect the value of it. What's really important is the period in which it's made and the fact that it has that circular-shaped movement that runs eight days, strikes the hour on the hour and also strikes once every half hour. When a clock collector looks at a clock like this, that's really what they want to know. They want to know it's of that quality, from that period.

GUEST

Okay.

APPRAISER

When people buy clocks like this, they want that visual, wow, that's a great-looking thing.

And that obviously has that for you because-- GUEST

It's got the wow factor.

APPRAISER

You can see it in your eyes. You light up when you talk about it. They made a lot of them. In reality, if you were to go to replace this clock and you go into a high-end retail shop or just a nice retail shop in a local city like Cleveland, you would expect to find this clock priced at around $1,200-$1,500.

GUEST

Okay. That's more than I thought.