Antiques Roadshow

HOST

Last summer, Roadshow paid a visit to toy aficionado Noel Barrett at his home in eastern Pennsylvania, where he shared the story of a massive mascot that ended up as a centerpiece of his own eclectic collection.

APPRAISER

It was in Milwaukee in 1998.It's exciting when you're sitting at the table and you're waiting for something to come in and see the crowd, and all of a sudden you see something above people's heads that comes up to my table. And I'm just I mean, you know, once in a while you get something that just knocks you noxious socks off. And this did.

GUEST

I was working at a bakery in Los Angeles in nineteen sixty nine, and my supervisor told me to throw all the junk out of the attic that was in the bakery. So I threw all this stuff out in a dumpster, with the exception of Speedie. I thought it was kind of cute thought I'd take him home.

APPRAISER

What you have here is an absolutely wonderful advertising figure. I understand you've done a little bit of research trying to figure out the value.

GUEST

The only Alka-Seltzer figures I saw were, what, six inches high or about a hundred and fifty dollars.

I don't have a clue as though something this big would be worth. APPRAISER

You write the little small figures of the ones you see all the time, and they are worth three to four or five hundred dollars, depending on the condition. This is a wonderful piece. I've never seen this particular size before, and it is absolutely astounding. I would expect that a collector today would be thrilled to pay four to five thousand dollars for this incredible Speedy Alka Seltzer.

GUEST

Well, he's as good as gone. What's up?

This is as good as gone. APPRAISER

People always ask, do you ever get a chance to buy that stuff on the Roadshow? And one of the rules for sure is we cannot buy anything at the show. We cannot offer any money to somebody there. But I bet if people call up after the show, say, would you like to put it in your auction? Absolutely. I don't think I've ever had somebody called me up and said they want to sell it. Well, it did happen. About six months later, the guy called me. He said, I you know, I'm the guy with that Speedy. It's December I could use some Christmas money. Is there any chance you'd want to buy that? I said, yeah, I really loved it. Now, 1998, I thought an auction estimate would be four to five thousand dollars. We talked about it and we came up with the price somewhere in that range. I honestly can't remember. And he shipped it to me, I guess from Milwaukee. And I was really excited. It's really it's one of my favorite pieces here. Now, today's market, you know, it's like a lot of things on the Antiques Roadshow, a lot of things in the antiques world. Things have softened up like brown furniture. People don't want brown furniture anymore. Now, Speedy, back in that day, there were a lot of people interested in really great 50s and 60s advertising figures. And this would have been one of the iconic pieces, I think today, frankly, they're not that many people out there for this material. And I think today, if I had this at auction, I would probably estimated like two to three thousand, a little bit less than I paid for it. But I don't care. I love it makes me smile every day.