NARRATOR: Major funding is provided by... Alex Cooper Auctioneers, appraisers and auctioneers of fine art, jewelry, and collectibles.

Online and in person gallery auctions every month, serving buyers and sellers in Maryland and around the world for over 100 years.

♪ ♪ Second Story Books, celebrating 50 years of dedicated book selling.

ALLAN STYPECK: Coming up on "Chesapeake Collectibles."

ROBERT HARRISON: Can you explain a little bit about what you have here?

GUEST: Absolutely, my girlfriend Jennifer gave me the ballot box, which is from 1880 in Baltimore.

LEX REEVES: What's interesting about this piece is that it's two mediums.

It's a photograph, and it's also a watercolor.

SELDEN MORGAN: Each and every one of the Carl Schon's seahorse pieces are unique, they're all one of a kind, because they're all real seahorses.

GUEST: Right.

ALLAN: Which it makes it one of the largest known items of Kennedy's speeches that are hand-drafted.

GUEST: Everybody today wanted to push that plunger.

AMORY: Well, of course.

GUEST: And they did.

AMORY: And, and we're gonna push it in just a second, we switched out the dynamite.

(theme music playing).

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ALLAN: Welcome to "Chesapeake Collectibles."

What did you bring us?

GUEST: My father was a bureau chief at United Press International for many years in, in Washington.

And he was also president of the Gridiron Club in 1962, that President Kennedy spoke at.

And this is a menu from the dinner that was signed by President Kennedy and the seven Mercury astronauts, who I believe were all in attendance at the dinner.

He also, a friend of his, managed to snag a copy of the speech that President Kennedy gave, but during the dinner, he rewrote the speech.

You can see this is Ted Sorenson's initials here, and that was a draft he wrote, and he rewrote the speech all during the dinner on the front and back, and made all kinds of annotations.

One of the pages is missing, I think it went back to the office with him and was in his papers and is now in the Kennedy Museum in Boston.

ALLAN: Right, and very interesting about this, so Ted Kennedy, or excuse me, Ted Sorenson, wrote the original draft.

John Kennedy, I believe, then reviewed it, and before he gave the speech, he hand-annotated it...

GUEST: Right.

ALLAN: And changed the speech.

It was originally six pages, of which you have five of the six pages.

And it has, by my count, over 500 words in Kennedy's hand and multiple, slashes and editing marks, which makes it one of the largest known items of Kennedy's speeches that are hand-drafted.

Everything in this is original.

Unfortunately, I believe that this menu is facsimile.

I have handled a couple of Kennedy items like this, and this signature is not his.

This is an auto pen or secretarial facsimile.

And the seven astronauts they usually did not sign sequentially like that unless they were doing it for autopen purposes.

So I am hesitant to say that this is original, but I feel that this is authentic.

GUEST: Okay.

ALLAN: So that's part one of our collection.

Let's go to part two.

GUEST: So my father was at the, at his, at the Washington Bureau when shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in 1963 and ended up working there for probably three nights without, you know, maybe taking a shower at a hotel or something.

And came home with a box of teletype rolls that I think we talked was over 200 feet.

It's three different wires.

There's the A wire, which is what this is, which is where the main news is.

You can see this is just ordinary stories.

There's something about Broadway boxes, there's a, um, and then there's a murder story.

And then you have the first bullet, and these are actually the first words anybody heard about the assassination because Merriman Smith was in the press car that was five or six cars behind Kennedy's car.

And he dictated a bulletin to the Dallas Bureau that basically says, "three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade today."

And that was all we knew for a little while.

Then somebody tried to come back and finish the story, and headquarters in New York told them to get off the wire and give it to Dallas.

Then they had a little more detail, and then we had a flash, and this is before people were positive that Kennedy had been killed and the flash says, and you could tell that somebody was very nervous in typing this, "Kennedy seriously wounded, perhaps seriously, perhaps fatally by assassin's bullet."

ALLAN: And it just goes on by the minute for over 12 hours.

GUEST: Right, it's 12 Hours.

ALLAN: Exactly, and the additional material is Smitty's original...

GUEST: Yeah, so Merriman Smith was in the motorcade, went to the hospital, stayed in the hospital until it was known that he was dead.

Then they flew back to Washington, he went straight to the bureau, and he typed a first-person story that accounted the entire day from before the assassination through coming back to Washington and everything that he saw and was involved in at the time.

ALLAN: And really, this is the first draft, which later was what he received the Pulitzer Prize for.

GUEST: Right.

ALLAN: Right.

So, have you ever had this appraised before?

GUEST: No.

ALLAN: Alright, so let's break it into components.

I'm going to price the five pages of manuscript for a minimum of $75,000.

Okay, that's the start.

GUEST: Okay.

ALLAN: Okay, now we're gonna go to component two, which is the complete teletype of which I've seen, so I know that it's all there, and, and, and Smitty, Smith's drafts, I'm gonna combine the two and make that one collection.

And I'm gonna do a minimum price, a minimum price of that, of 35 to $45,000.

GUEST: Wow.

ALLAN: In the current market the, I think this would actually go a little higher because of the, the provenance and the combination.

So I think if you combine the two of these together, the minimum value that I would put for this is $120,000 or more.

GUEST: Holy cow.

ALLAN: Okay.

So I, I, I have to thank you for coming 'cause this is a phenomenal collection.

GUEST: Well, thank you very much.

ALLAN: Thank you.

(cash register bell).

♪ ♪ LEX: Welcome to "Chesapeake Collectibles."

I saw you taking this out of your bag, that you, your clothing bag.

And immediately I was what a, what a charming, charming young lady.

So tell me, tell me about, tell me about it.

GUEST: Well, this is hung on the walls of at least four homes in my family.

And the oral story is that she is a cousin of my grandfather, Stevens.

It's a daughter of the cousin.

LEX: Oh, okay.

GUEST: And in Cincinnati, Ohio, this cousin must have had a millinery shop, in the 1870s.

And one day, the young or mature artist living above her sink broke, and the water ran down the boards above my cousin's millinery shop.

And he had no money to pay for all the hats that have been damaged from the water that ran down from his little studio.

So he looked at her, frantic, and then finally he looked at her and said, this is how the story goes, "I do not have the money to pay you, but I could pay you with a portrait."

LEX: Oh, how wonderful.

GUEST: And the photographer's help.

LEX: Right, so we know that the photographer's, James Landy, who was a, an important Cincinnati photographer of the day, this might have been at a time when he was a little low on funds, but he was a successful photographer.

What's interesting about this piece is that it's two mediums.

It's a photograph, and it's also a watercolor.

Now the photograph done by Landy, and then we have another artist, Will P. Noble, which we weren't able to find much information on, who did all of the highlights on top of it.

So you have a two medium piece, it gave it some texture and richness like a painting.

So it was a less expensive way than having a, a paint, a painted portrait done.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

LEX: You can see the areas that are just the photograph on her arms, that kind of flat area, but then you can see all of the rest.

Her face is the photograph, but everything else, the eyes, the lips, all of this color, and the, the, the flora and the no fauna, actually the flora.

This is all done in gouache, which is a watercolor, a base watercolor.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

LEX: So it was a, a, a, a way to make a photograph into a painting.

Have you ever had it appraised?

GUEST: No.

LEX: Okay.

GUEST: This is my first time.

LEX: Okay, okay.

You can see, his Landy's work, that are just small cabinet cards.

They don't sell for much.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

LEX: Some of his portraits, if they're a famous actresses, he did, he did famous people portraits, those can bring some money.

What's wonderful about this is one, it's a charming young lady, a very pretty girl and, and that's a popular subject matter.

So on a, on a kind of a monetary level, things of children are much more desirable because people love having a portrait of, having an adult, not necessarily, but this is a family piece.

So it, it doesn't matter that much.

But for insurance purposes, I mean, I think we'd be good, so we don't have another leak, if it ever happened...

GUEST: Yes, right, right, right, right.

LEX: So with the frame, which in itself is probably worth around seven in the condition, $750 just for the frame, the whole package together with the family provenance, I think probably for insurance purposes, probably around 2,000 - 2,400, somewhere in that range.

It's a, it's a beautiful piece and, and it's one of the better examples of a highlighted watercolor highlighted photograph that I've seen, it's, it's, it's, it's just wonderful.

And I love the story.

Thank you so much for bringing it.

It's a, it's a wonderful piece.

GUEST: My pleasure.

(cash register bell).

♪ ♪ ROBERT: Well, welcome to "Chesapeake Collectibles."

Looks like you've brought me a collection.

Can you explain a little bit about what you have here?

GUEST: Absolutely, my girlfriend Jennifer gave me the, ballot box, which was from 1880 in Baltimore.

And once I had the ballot box, I thought what would be cool is to get buttons from as many different campaigns and things that I could to fill it up with.

And, I've always had an interest in politics, and I've tried to have a very bipartisan and historic array of buttons that reflect the, the history of our country.

ROBERT: Bipartisan is a safe way to go.

And I think you, now, you've collected every one of these, right?

GUEST: Yes, yep, I... ROBERT: Okay.

GUEST: Mostly through eBay or just through people I've, I've heard about, I've reached out and collected, and, it's been really a lot of fun.

ROBERT: Do you have a sense of the comprehensive years that we have in here?

GUEST: In terms of original ones, I think probably, uh, around 1930, in the 1930s.

ROBERT: Okay.

GUEST: I have some originals.

ROBERT: Okay.

GUEST: But, you know, there's just a, a really wide array.

ROBERT: And about how many do you have?

GUEST: I believe there are about 500 or so.

ROBERT: Wow.

GUEST: And I've actually got more at home that I hadn't put in yet... ROBERT: Of course.

GUEST: Because there's not a lot of room.

ROBERT: Yeah, and as we look at them, yeah, I see McCain and Kucinich and Wilder, and as you say, there's a lot of things in here.

And I'm just gonna turn it for the camera to see a little bit.

So on all four sides, and it's chock-full of political buttons.

GUEST: Yeah.

ROBERT: Or political pin-backs as they've been known for years.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: And you have them in lots of different sizes.

The large size, the, the doubles, which are known as jugates, so we have both running mates here.

And the item that's at the far end of the table next to Jen?

GUEST: So this is my mother's story, actually.

I was telling her about the buttons that Greg has collected, and she said, "Oh," and this was recently, she said, "Oh, by the way, I met Nixon."

ROBERT: Oh, wow.

GUEST: And so then she told me, this story about when she was a student at the University of Illinois, she, along with some other students, um, were chosen to greet him at a Whistle-Stop tour through the state of Illinois.

And so they all dressed in white tops and black, you know, either pants or skirts, and they had a sash of some sort.

ROBERT: So she personally got the signature that's on this card?

GUEST: And yes, as a thank you, he gave all the students a, a sig, a signed card.

ROBERT: Fantastic, this is certainly an impressive collection, and as if that's not enough, it's housed in a very special container.

Greg, why don't you tell me a little bit about that?

GUEST: Yeah, it's, Jennifer got me, for me for Christmas... thank you.

And it's a 1880 ballot box that was originally used at we were told a firehouse in Baltimore.

It still has the key with it, so it locks.

And so I kind of, I really love it.

It was a great Christmas present.

ROBERT: Well, it's a great collection, and that's how we're going to approach it as a collection.

I'll begin with the political pin-backs or political buttons, as you said, you have about 500, uh, on average, political buttons from the 20th century are selling at the low end at about $10 a piece.

So, in looking at that, I would say at 500 pieces, the low end being half of them being at about 10, the high end would be about $20.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

ROBERT: We're looking at about $7,000...

GUEST: Goodness.

ROBERT: For just the political buttons.

GUEST: Wow.

ROBERT: The political ballot box is very interesting.

It's actually an outgrowth of what, interestingly enough, was voter fraud in the 1850s.

Around 1858, there was a case of voter fraud in which people discovered that in some ballot boxes, there were hollow bases where they were stuffing ballots.

So, some entrepreneur, entrepreneurial individual, came up with a glass-sided ballot box so people could actually see the ballots being put into the ballot box, and that way not think fraud was going on.

And so it lived quite a while through the 19th century.

This date's to about 1880.

The National Register Company actually patented one of these.

It's brass on the outside and oak on the top in terms of value for it, it runs about $400.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

ROBERT: $300.

And then you have some memorabilia, the signature of Nixon alone would be about 30 to $50.

So I think all told in looking at this group, what you would expect if you were to offer it at auction and someone had the wherewithal to go through all these buttons...

GUEST: Right.

ROBERT: Would probably be somewhere in the 7,500 to $8,000 range for everything.

GUEST: Wow, that's, well, more than I anticipated.

ROBERT: It's a fantastic collection.

I appreciate you bringing it in and sharing it with us, and really giving us an idea of what it takes when you're dedicated to your collection.

GUEST: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

GUEST: Thank you.

ROBERT: Sure, thank you.

(cash register bell).

♪ ♪ SELDEN: Thank you so much for coming to "Chesapeake Collectibles" today.

GUEST: Thank you.

SELDEN: Can you tell me a little bit about what you brought?

GUEST: Yes, these are seahorses that are sterling sil, silver, and the sterling silver covers a real seahorse.

Carl Schon was the maker.

They were inherited from my husband's sister.

She inherited 'em from her aunt, and they were ultimately inherited from his grandmother.

SELDEN: Carl Schon is a famous Baltimore jewelry manufacturer, and he is absolutely, he was known for his sterling silver and the high detail that he was able to put into his pieces, but most often, these seahorses is what he's known for throughout the world.

So I have heard so many stories of customers bringing in the seahorses, getting 'em from the ocean, and bringing them in.

And so that's when you can see, see how detailed this is.

That's actually the scales and the bone and all of the actual curve from the real seahorse.

And so he casts them in sterling silver.

And so each and every one of Carl Schon's seahorse pieces are unique.

They're all one of a kind, because they're all real seahorses.

GUEST: Right.

SELDEN: So they're signed Carl Schon, which is very important, 'cause there were a lot of people that used to make seahorse jewelry to replicate Carl Schon's, but these are absolutely his.

Carl Schon's store was down on Saratoga Street, which is all part of historic Baltimore.

And he did pass away in 1923, but his company was incorporated, and so they were still making jewelry until the early 1970s with Carl Schon's signature.

But I have to say, because of the dating and because the history, I do think that these are some of his original Carl Schon pieces.

GUEST: Wow.

SELDEN: And this one in particular, so this is carved jade that I would guess that someone in the family had a piece of carved jade, and then Carl himself said, I am going to fabricate it so that the tail will absolutely, you know, hug this jade piece.

So this one is even more unique than any Carl Schon piece I've ever seen.

GUEST: That's fascinating.

SELDEN: Yeah, have you ever had him appraised before?

GUEST: No.

SELDEN: So this is a larger one so, you know, 'cause they go in rings and cuff links, and depending on the size of the seahorse, so this is about, you know, two, two and a half inches each of these.

And so I would think that this one in, in an auction value in an auction setting, would be about 1500 to $2,000.

GUEST: Wow.

SELDEN: I know.

GUEST: That's amazing.

SELDEN: I know, now this one with that unique piece of jade, because jade has its own value, and I can tell that this one is really custom-made, this one is maybe closer to $2,000.

GUEST: Wow.

SELDEN: I know, I know.

GUEST: That's... SELDEN: And I just, I really can't thank you for bringing in this wonderful collection and, and Baltimore history of Carl Schons.

GUEST: Thank you.

SELDEN: Thank you so much for coming to "Chesapeake Collectibles."

GUEST: Thank you.

SELDEN: Yeah.

(cash register bell).

♪ ♪ AMORY: You know, I wanna thank you for coming out to "Chesapeake Collectibles," and when you literally rolled up to my table today, I was looking across this myriad of objects, and it's like, "who is this guy?"

(laughter).

I'm gonna go in on a limb, you're an engineer, aren't you?

GUEST: Yeah, yes, yeah.

AMORY: You are.

Well, you know, immediately I'm struck that what we have here are a number of pieces of industry, in one form or another.

GUEST: Yep.

AMORY: Can you gimme a little bit of description about what, what you brought me?

GUEST: Well, let's see, we'll start out with the, the Ajax blasting machine.

This cannon... AMORY: An iconic piece of every Western movie, I think that's ever been out there.

GUEST: And everybody, I, I have to tell you, everybody today that came by it wanted to push that plunger.

AMORY: Well, of course.

GUEST: And they did.

AMORY: And, and we're gonna push it in just a second.

We switched out the dynamite.

GUEST: So yeah, this is an Ajax blasting machine came into really heavy use in the 1930s.

AMORY: Right, probably in the mining industry.

GUEST: Yes.

AMORY: I think that's really where they were known.

I mean the literal opening up of the West...

GUEST: Yeah.

AMORY: ...with, with big holes.

GUEST: Yeah.

AMORY: What of this piece I did, I did recognize this piece from a recent appraisal I had done.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

AMORY: But I'm gonna go ahead and let you describe it.

GUEST: It's a wagon jack, it's solid... AMORY: It's heavy.

GUEST: It's solid oak and heavy metal inside.

We'll flip the latch over here and crank her up.

But you can imagine... AMORY: Well, this is way before AAA.

(laughter).

GUEST: Yeah.

AMORY: And, you know, and, and that's why I, I, I had just done a Conestoga wagon appraisal and, and they, one, one of these was attached to it because if you broke your wagon wheel out in the field, you had to have some way of getting it jacked up.

GUEST: Yep, yep, yep.

AMORY: The, the, the, the metal on here, I mean, it's, it's Smith's metal.

GUEST: Heavy, yeah, heavy metal.

AMORY: Huge gauge.

GUEST: Yeah.

AMORY: And, and, very, very solidly made with an oak timber in the middle of it.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

AMORY: That's gonna get your wagon jacked.

Tell me about this piece down here.

GUEST: This is a Renfro hand truck.

They use these on the docks.

It has incorporated a scale.

AMORY: And that's impressive.

GUEST: Yeah.

AMORY: Because you're down on the docks, you're gonna either be going to buy or sell.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

AMORY: You're transporting with this, and you immediately have a way of weighing and getting paid out or paying.

GUEST: On your scales, yeah.

AMORY: On, on their scales.

And it's also portable, so it's moving around to wherever it needs to be.

GUEST: Not so portable, it's about 250 pounds.

AMORY: Well, okay.

You and I aren't porting it, but you know, somebody's gonna port it around the docks...

GUEST: Yeah, yeah.

AMORY: But you know what these are, are the innovations of industry...

GUEST: Oh yeah, unbelievable.

AMORY: ...across nation-building.

They are pieces that, that out of context today, people have no idea how to recognize...

GUEST: What they are.

AMORY: Have you ever had anybody appraise them individually or as a group?

GUEST: No.

AMORY: This is obviously an area of collecting that's fairly narrow, mainly engineers in black shirts.

GUEST: Actually, actually, I'm very eclectic.

I've got a little bit of everything.

AMORY: I suspected that.

But it is, I, I see more of these kinds of things showing up in, in, in, things that have been donated to museums of industry as recognitions of the way industry got to the point that it is.

GUEST: Progressed, yep.

AMORY: Yeah, and if we were approaching it from that standpoint, you know, we would see the scale and, and movable scale probably in the 3,500 to $5,000 range.

The jack, a little bit more esoteric, you probably aren't gonna put a Chevy on top of that, but you probably could...

GUEST: Probably.

AMORY: But it's probably in the $800 range.

GUEST: Okay, cool.

AMORY: The, the, the plunger?

GUEST: Ajax blasting machine.

AMORY: I mean, it's priceless as a talking point.

GUEST: I know what's coming.

AMORY: You know, it's priceless as a talking point.

So we've got probably here another 800 to $1,200 in, in potential value.

GUEST: Yeah.

AMORY: But we wanted to close our segment together with a bang.

GUEST: Okay.

AMORY: Are you ready?

GUEST: I'm ready, go for it.

(explosion).

(cash register bell).

GENICE LEE: Next time on "Chesapeake Collectibles."

FRANK SHAIA: This is what I love the most.

GUEST: Yeah.

FRANK: I'm, I just, when you walked in and laid this out on the table, I was just overwhelmed.

This is so fabulous.

AMORY: It does reflect a piece of erotica, and erotica was often, during these times, hidden away, but ever present.

GENICE: She studied abroad in Paris and was also the first African American woman in 1907 to be commissioned by the U.S. government for a piece, so...

GUEST: Wow.

GENICE: That's pretty impressive.

GUEST: So this is the very first medical book published in America expressly for the use of American surgeons during the Revolutionary War.

DENNIS HARTER: This was something that was not, a purchased souvenir, that it actually had been flying on board the ship because it's got all sorts of wear and discoloration from, the time that was out at sea and the times it was operating, in the Pacific Waters.

NARRATOR: Major funding was provided by... Alex Cooper Auctioneers, appraisers and auctioneers of fine art, jewelry, and collectibles.

Online and in person gallery auctions every month, serving buyers and sellers in Maryland and around the world for over 100 years.

♪ ♪ Second Story Books, celebrating 50 years of dedicated book selling.

GUEST: I learned that my item has a lot more value than I thought.

GUEST: I learned more than I ever could have expected to.

And I appreciated that.

GUEST: We would definitely be back here next, next year.

GUEST: Well, it was a wonderful experience, we had a great time meeting all the, the people at MPT as well as the other collectors and people who brought items in.

GUEST: I think it's a great experience.

I did it one other time years ago, and it was the same way; it was great.

GUEST: And I'm glad that he didn't listen to me when I told him to stop buying these buttons.

(laughter).

But really, we had a great time.

GUEST: Yep.

NARRATOR: Stream anytime, anywhere with the free PBS app.