Watch ROADSHOW's Season 28 "Best Moments"!
ANTIQUES ROADSHOW was back on the road for Season 28 with binge-worthy episodes from a new set of cities! Watch these "Best Moments" — 15 hand-picked appraisals that feature our favorite laughs, tears and surprises from the 2024 season. ROADSHOW’s Season 28 Best Moments are available to watch individually. Did your favorite Season 28 appraisal make the list?
1. See the painting that "captures quiet."
📺 Episode: Alaska Native Heritage Center, Hour 1
APPRAISER: What can you tell me about this wonderful Rusty Heurlin?
GUEST: Well, I know my grandfather got it commissioned back in 1964. They were living in Fairbanks, and they took the family on a drive down to Ester, where, uh, Rusty lived and, and worked. My dad was about ten or 11 back then. He, he remembers faintly, but, uh, my grandfather went in a separate room with Rusty and discussed what kind of painting he wanted. And then they left, and about, uh, three months later, they had this, uh, nice painting delivered to their home.
APPRAISER: So now you've lived with this painting all your life.
GUEST: Yes, my, of course, my grandfather had it, um, passed it on to my mom and dad. They gifted it to me and, and my wife last year. So we have it hanging in our house. It's, uh, definitely has a lot of sentimental value. My parents grew up in Fairbanks, I grew up in California. They moved down, um, down to California in the '80s. But I always grew up hearing about Alaska, and wanting to, to go explore and, and move back, and this, this painting was part of it. It just really captures the mystique and the frontier of Alaska. So I always had this in my mind of, of just going to the unknown, and then I finally moved up, uh, when I was 18, and, um, and made the dream come true, yeah.
APPRAISER: So have you ever seen the Northern Lights?
GUEST: I have, yes. How close is this? It's hard to capture it, but it's, it's close. It, it's close-- it definitely brings back that feeling of, of seeing the lights for the first time.
APPRAISER: Rusty was born in Sweden-- his parents were visiting there-- in the late 19th century, and his family moved to the suburbs of Boston. And he studied art at the Fenway School of Illustration. He first came to Alaska in 1916, and then was in the military for a while, and then came back and stayed until he died at the age of 90, in 1986. He loved Alaska, obviously, and this painting is what makes Alaska Alaska. The snow, the musher, the Northern Lights. The palette-- uh, it's a really gentle, subtle blue. What I really like about the painting is, he really was able to capture quiet. That's an amazing accomplishment to me. It's oil on canvas. He's using his middle name, rather than Rusty. Painted in, as you said, 1964. Do you have any idea what he paid for it?
GUEST: I don't know-- I don't have a dollar figure. I, I can't assume it was a, a cheap, uh, painting. Back then, he was quite well known, Rusty was.
APPRAISER: Did you know that the Anchorage Museum has a piece quite similar to this? Oh, no, I didn't know that. Yeah, they have a number of his paintings. I would give it an auction estimate of between $40,000 and $60,000.
GUEST: Wow, that's more than I thought. (chuckling)
APPRAISER: And for insurance... Mm-hmm. ...I think maybe around $75,000.
GUEST: Okay, wow. Was not expecting that. (chuckles) That's quite astounding. Don't plan on selling it-- it's, it's a family piece.
2. Against the odds, a surviving piece of history!
📺 Episode: Alaska Native Heritage Center, Hour 2
GUEST: This is my great-grandfather's climbing axe from the first expedition up Denali. My great-grandfather is Harry Karstens. He climbed in 1913. He was working on a ranch in Billings, Montana, when a guy came into town talking about gold. Came to the gold rush in 1897, very young, around 18, and Harry arrives in Dyea. He unloads the boat. (chuckles): He doesn't have anything with him, so he starts exchanging labor for goods. Worked an entire day for a can of peas. Builds a boat at Lindeman. He does all the classic adventures. He lives two cabins away from Jack London for his second winter. An opening makes itself available for running the mail by dog sled.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: Never run a dog sled before. Has to teach himself how to, how to do all these things. He learned from the First Nations peoples how to do all the skills that were appropriate to survive in the Alaska winter.
APPRAISER: Hm.
GUEST: And he builds up a reputation. He shouldn't have survived. He just kept surviving. And that grabbed the attention of the Archdeacon Hudson Stuck...
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: ...who wanted to climb that mountain over there.
APPRAISER: Harry was the leader of the expedition, right?
GUEST: He was the climbing leader.
APPRAISER: Climbing leader, okay.
GUEST: They were partners, equal partners.
APPRAISER: Okay, but there were two others, right?
GUEST: Yes, Robert Tatum and Walter Harper, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And Walter Harper was an Alaska Native.
GUEST: He was.
APPRAISER: Did they all have ice axe?
GUEST: They did-- Stuck went down to a local blacksmith and he asked them to make him something. Came back, found four of these things cut out of old wood-chopping axes. Robert Tatum lost his in McKinley River... Yeah. ...when he fell backwards with a heavy pack. Walter picked him up and carried him out. Harper's and Stuck's disappeared. This is the only one we know that exists today.
APPRAISER: This is an amazing object. In 1913, the name of the mountain was Mount McKinley at the time.
GUEST: Yes-- some of the guys I climbed with, we actually spoke at CoGNA, the naming authority that deals with names, uh, in this country.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And we got the ball rolling. The local community did their part, and the Athabascan Koyukon name has finally been returned to us. Uh, we, Denali is one of many, many Native names.
APPRAISER: It's the tallest mountain in North America.
GUEST: It is the tallest mountain in North America. It was just remeasured at 20,310 feet.
APPRAISER: Mountaineering is a wonderful niche category of highly specialized collectors...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAIASER: ...that love this stuff. The enthusiast. The problem is, is that we don't see a lot of materials.
GUEST: That's right.
APPRAISER: Stays in the family.
GUEST: Yes, it does.
APPRAISER: As it has with yours. (both laugh)
GUEST: You earned these things.
APPRAISER: You earned it the hard way.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Also, it trades privately, if it does trade.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So we don't see a lot that comes onto, uh, an auction market of things. There was only four that ascended the mountain. Three of them are gone, so this is the only one.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And it's a milestone event. So it's the first climb that's made it all the way to the summit.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Pretty cool.
GUEST: It is.
APPRAISER: Yes. Provenance is key. And it's been in your family.
GUEST: It has been in a trunk in a barn. (laughs)
APPRAISER: So, at retail, for insurance purposes...
GUEST: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...$20,000.
GUEST: (groans, laughs) Oh, no, that's a little bit too much.
APPRAISER: (laughing) You sure?
GUEST: Now I got to lock it up.
(both laugh)
3. Bob Ross on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW? Iconic.
📺 Episode: Alaska Native Heritage Center, Hour 3
CREW: You're all looking at Laura. We're not even here.
GUESTS: Okay.
APPRAISER: We've put together a little Bob Ross appreciation society today. So I, I'm a fan, and I actually didn't think that I'd ever possibly either see one in person or ever have a hope of perhaps finding one for sale somewhere. They just never come up for auction. And trust me, I keep my eyes out. This is kind of a big deal for me, personally. I watched when I was a kid, and he's the reason I picked up a paintbrush for the first time. (voice breaking): So people have a very emotional connection. Look, I'm tearing up.
GUEST: Oh...
APPRAISER: People have such an emotional connection to Bob, and you can say whatever you want, whether you like the scenes or you don't or they're your style, but he's therapy for so many people, and people love him, so his paintings sell for a lot of money. I'm holding one of your paintings.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: So you have two, and you each ha, have another Bob Ross. How did you get 'em?
GUEST: Well, my parents got 'em in the '70s.
GUEST: A Quonset hut sale.
GUEST: Salvation Army!
GUSET: It was a Christmas gift to my parents in the n, in the 1970s.
APPRAISER: They were all acquired locally and they were all done by Bob Ross when he was at Eielson Air Force Base in the '70s. And when he left the Air Force, he went back to the Lower 48, and he began his TV show. Actually, in 1983 out of a small PBS station in Virginia was the first series, but it didn't have very wide distribution. So it wasn't really until 1984 that most of the country was starting to see The Joy of Painting. And ten years later, in 1994, they wrapped it up after doing 31 seasons and over 400 episodes. We have two Northern Lights paintings. Yours specifically was a commission of a cabin that your parents, uh, encountered. And then we have some very similar mountain scenes. You can see where he was building his, his style and his skill set back in the '70s, before he started the TV show. What we're discovering, there is a bonanza of Bob Ross paintings in Alaska that I'm so excited to find out about.
(all laughing)
APPRAISER: 'Cause I didn't know! One of the things I wanted to point out is, he actually specifically says on the stretcher s, stamps that all of your paintings have, which is how we know these are his from the '70s, he calls them Alaskan oil paintings, 'cause that's what they were back in the day.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: So, it's a little tricky, because these were not on the show, and most of the prices we have are from paintings that were on the show. In the current marketplace, Bob Ross paintings like this would sell in the $15,000 to $25,000 range.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh!
(all laughing)
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: How much did you guys pay?
GUEST: Really?!
(all laughing)
APPRAISER: Do we have any prices here? So you inherited...
GUEST: $12!
APPRAISER: 12, you win, I think.
GUEST: Mine was five!
APPRAISER: Five dollars?
GUEST: (laughing): At the Quonset hut.
APPRAISER: Quonset hut? Paintings from the TV series sell in a certain range. There was one that recently did $41,000, and the most expensive one that we've heard of was from the very first TV show, and that did six figures.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER: From humble beginnings came The Joy of Painting.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Which was obviously a beloved franchise for PBS, so we're keeping it in the family today.
4. Grandma's childhood crush was a real treasure...
📺 Episode: Old Sturbridge Village, Hour 1
GUEST: My wife's grandmother, she was a volunteer at a school, and she got friendly with a sportswriter at one of the major newspapers, and sh, Thelma loved Ted Williams.
APPRAISER: So, Jeff, tell me about your friend that you brought today.
GUEST: Well, my friend is a Ted Williams jersey.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: It was, uh, passed down to us from Grandmother, uh, who, who, uh, had a friend who was a sportswriter in Boston. He knew that she loved Ted Williams, so he got her the jersey, and, uh, as a, as a gift and thanking her for, uh, taking care of his, uh, child, so...
APPRAISER: Really?
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: How would the sportswriter have gotten this jersey, do you think?
GUEST: Well, the, the story that I was told was that, uh, he just asked Ted for a jersey, took it off his back, and gave it to him.
APPRAISER: So, was it well-known that your grandmother had a crush on, on Teddy Ballgame?
GUEST: Uh, uh... Yeah.
APPRAISER: (laughs)
GUEST: (laughing): Yeah, it was. He was quite a, quite a player, so...
APPRAISER: What year is this from?
GUEST: 1946.
APPRAISER: 1946.
GUEST: And we have on the back here Williams' number, number nine, right?
GUEST: Mm-hmm, yep.
APPRAISER: And why do you think it was from 1946?
GUEST: Uh, the patch on the sleeve is, uh...
APPRAISER: Right.
GUEST: ...the only year that that patch was, uh, on a jersey, so...
APPRAISER: Okay-- oh, interesting. What you brought in is a Ted Williams, appears to be game-worn, Red Sox home jersey.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And the one thing that Teddy never accomplished-- Ted Williams, in his career...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...was winning a World Series. He came closest in 1946, but he really changed the Red Sox. If you looked at the Red Sox after they sold Babe Ruth in 1920, the Yankees' fortunes ascended.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Red Sox, unfortunately, went the other way, and they end up selling off a lot more players. So when Tom Yawkey bought the team in 1933, they were pretty much in the basement of the American League East. He changed everything. He started putting money into the team, and his real coup was signing Williams from the Pacific Coast League San Diego Padres in 1939. He was the slugger of the American League. And in '42, he won the Triple Crown, which is when a hitter leads the league in batting average, home runs, and RBIs. That season, he led with 36 home runs, 137 RBIs, and a .356 batting average. '43 to '45, he went in the service.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Serving in World War II, and came back out in '46. Left again for the Korean War in '52-'53. Came back, played until 1960. So let's talk about this. You said 1946, and that was a great year.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: But, um, you're wrong. (chuckles)
GUEST: I'm wrong?
APPRAISER: You are wrong. This patch, actually, this "health" patch, that's from 1942.
GUEST: Oh, okay, great.
APPRAISER: And they used it for one year. So this is actually a '42 Red Sox home jersey.
GUEST: Perfect.
APPRAISER: Let's take a look at the label, because the tagging is very important to determining the year...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...and the authenticity of the jersey. So you see the "Williams" stitched in there, and you also see "Spalding" and "McAuliffe." That's the first year, 1942, of the label for Spalding and Tim McAuliffe. And these are all the things we have to look at.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Another thing we look at this jersey, have there been any alterations? There are no alterations in terms of, this appears to be original, the number nine on the back appears to be original. As you can see, it appears to fit me, in terms of the length. It was definitely altered. It should be about this long. Okay?
GUEST: Oh, really? Okay.
APPRAISER: But it's still a 1942 Ted Williams, game-used, as far as we can see-- there's no red flags-- home jersey, from one of the greatest hitters of all time. It's one of the earliest Ted Williams known jerseys.
GUEST: I think it's pretty cool.
APPRAISER: It is very cool. And I have to tell you, alterations and all? I'd put an auction estimate, minimum, $200,000 to $250,000.
GUEST: Wow. That's great. Quarter-million. (chuckles) All right. What do you do with that? (chuckles)
APPRAISER: If it didn't have the alterations, it would more likely be in the $400,000 to $600,000 range.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: I would insure it for no less than half a million. $500,000.
GUEST: Damn. It's great.
APPRAISER: I don't know where the piece went, but... If we could find it. (laughs) (laughing): Put it back on.
5. A poignant time in history, reflected on today.
📺 Episode: Old Sturbridge Village, Hour 2
GUEST: This is a painting by the New Haven artist Winfred Rembert. It's entitled Moonshiners, and it is hand-carved, tooled painting on leather. Back in 2001, I was a executive producer of a news magazine show at the PBS affiliate in Connecticut, and one of our great producers on the show said, "I learned of this New Haven artist who paints on leather." And not only was it an art that he learned in prison, but it was his experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South in the '50s. My husband and I wanted to support him, so we went to his house in New Haven. Very sweet man. A man who was nearly lynched, a man who served seven years on a chain gang, yet he was a puppy of a guy. Just very sweet man. And, uh, we bought this, this painting.
APPRAISER: How many paintings were there? Did you have a choice?
GUEST: Oh, we did have a choice. It was his very modest home, and they were all lined up. There was probably 12, 13 paintings. It was all his community, his experiences. This spoke to us, and it hangs in our dining room, so it's really cool.
APPRAISER: And what did you pay Winfred for this?
GUEST: It was $1,200 in cash.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: So this artwork is by Winfred Rembert.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And he was born in 1945.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: As you said, in the Jim Crow South.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: He was born in Americus, Georgia.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: But grew up in Cuthbert, Georgia.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Because his mother had given him away...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...as a child. She had him out of wedlock. And the aunt lived in Cuthbert. And Cuthbert is about 150, 160 miles south of Atlanta.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And he grew up picking cotton.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Uneducated, could not read or write.
GUEST: Mm.
APPRAISER: And around the age of 19, he joined the Civil Rights Movement.
GUEST: Okay, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And there was one day, at a Civil Rights march in Cuthbert, he was chased by a group of white men, stole a car...
GUEST: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...was immediately captured, put in prison for a year with no trial.
GUEST: Oh. Oh, my.
APPRAISER: And at some point during that year, he was able to overcome a deputy sheriff, stole his gun, escaped, and was quickly captured. At that time, he was put in the trunk of a car...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...his clothes taken off, driven out to a field. And when they opened the trunk, he was surrounded by men with nooses hanging in the trees.
GUEST: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Very emotional.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And hung upside down and assaulted, mutilated.
GUEST: Mm, mm, mm.
APPRAISER: And he doesn't know how or why they stopped, but they did. And he was taken to prison. And he spent the next seven years in various prisons.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And as you said, on the chain gang...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...in Georgia.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And during his imprisonment, he actually learned to read.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And then he learned to write. He met his wife while in prison, Patsy.
GUEST: Patsy, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: He was released from prison, made his way up north, and settled in Bridgeport, and then...
GUEST: And then New Haven.
APPRAISER: Then New Haven.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: He has an autobiography, which in 2021 came out. And what was the title of it?
GUEST: The title is "Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South."
APPRAISER: It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021.
GUEST: Mm-hmm, '22.
APPRAISER: Winfred died in 2021.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: So he lived to be about 75.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And he did not start creating these artworks till he was about 50 or 51. He learned to tool leather in prison.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And there was a guy there he called TJ the Tooler. But he was a relatively young man...
GUEST: At that time, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...at that point in time. Uh, so that was in the late '60s, early '70s when he did that.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: You purchased this what year?
GUEST: Uh, 2001.
APPRAISER: So, 2001 would have been more on the early side...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...of his career. This was probably made shortly before you walked into his home and purchased it.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And we don't know exactly how many he did, but people are guessing somewhere around 500 to 800.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And this particular one people are now calling "Scenes From Daily Life."
GUEST: Okay, right, good point.
APPRAISER: So this is Cuthbert, Georgia.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Hamilton Avenue.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: That was the main...
GUEST: The main drag.
APPRAISER: The main drag.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: That's where the businesses were, the juke joints.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And this is moonshiners.
GUEST: Yeah, yep.
APPRAISER: And we have some yeast over there.
GUEST: (laughing): Yeah.
APPRAISER: And a wheelbarrow filled with sugar.
GUEST: Sugar, yep.
APPRAISER: Now, when you look at some of his other works, that are the chain gang...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...that are picking cotton...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...that show lynchings...
GUEST: Yeah, yep.
APPRAISER: ...it's very emotional.
GUEST: Very. Very intense, yeah.
APPRAISER: Very, very-- very, very intense. Toward the end of his life, he was under the care of a psychiatrist, because when he worked on certain scenes, on certain topics, he became physically ill.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: He was definitely suffering from PTSD...
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: ...and was diagnosed as such, but that helped him.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: And in his autobiography, he thanked the doctors that helped him, which allowed him to continue to work...
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: ...on those subjects.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: Which are some of his most powerful artworks.
GUEST: And when we met him, he was such a, a warm man. You would think with that kind of experiences, he'd be spitting nails.
APPRAISER: I met him twice.
GUEST: Oh, you did?
APPRAISER: The second time I met him, he was at a function honoring someone that had helped him...
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: ...in his journey.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: And he got up and sang "Amazing Grace."
GUEST: (gasps) Ooh, I just got a chill.
APPRAISER: There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Yeah, it was so powerful.
GUEST: (voice breaking): Mm, yeah. (chuckles) (sniffles) Yeah.
APPRAISER: Yeah? Amazing-- I'll always remember that. So, here we are.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: The market has become very, very active. Museums now feel a need to have an example of his artwork.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: In today's market, retail, I would have no problem saying this is somewhere between $100,000 and $125,000.
GUEST: (softly): Are you serious? Wow, um... I hate to say "wow," but I didn't expect that, um... That's super. I mean, I-- you're telling me that the art world not just values this, but values his stories, values the storyteller.
APPRAISER: Absolutely-- you know, absolutely.
GUEST: My husband and I just wanted to support him, never knowing that this would become such a legacy.
6. Cigar box or safety deposit box?
📺 Episode: Old Sturbridge Village, Hour 3
GUEST: They were my dad's. I found them in the cigar box that you see in the back of the closet under a stack of sweaters.
APPRAISER: Mm. The proverbial cigar box.
GUEST: (chuckling): Yes.
APPRAISER: Where kids, uh, for time immemorial put their cards...
GUEST: And their treasures.
GUEST: ...and marbles and jacks, whatever.
APPRAISER: This is the 1948 Leaf card set.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: It's not a very common card set. How old would your father have been around this time?
GUEST: What year did you say?
APPRAISER: This is 1948.
GUEST: Uh, he would have been about 12, 13.
APPRAISER: He obviously kept his cards nice.
GUEST: He, uh... He, yeah, he loved sports, and, and he was a tidy person in that way. Everything in order, that kind of thing.
APPRAISER: Yeah, and it shows, because, uh, you know, here we are, decades and decades out, and these look, uh, as they say, pack-fresh.
GUEST: Oh, good.
APPRAISER: Great, beautiful color. And, um, you know, that's what we love to see, and that's what collectors love to see.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: So the 1948 Leaf set has always been interesting 'cause it has a, a lot of different types of rookie cards. 1948 was kinda one of the first years after the war that, uh, that a card set was produced. So there were a lot of rookies in that set.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Um, and then, it's an interesting set because, uh, we have guys who were in the war coming back, let's say, Ted Williams.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And then you also have, um, all-time greats that they put in the set, as well, like Babe Ruth and, and this gentleman right here. Now, you've heard of Honus Wagner.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: We've talked about the Honus Wagner card.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: This is a Honus Wagner card. He's John Wagner. Now, it's not...
GUEST: Not "the"...
APPRAISER: ..."the" Honus Wagner card...
GUEST: (chuckling): Okay.
APPRAISER: ...but this is Honus Wagner. It's a nice card.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And a card like that, in that condition, is probably worth about $500.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Yeah. Not bad, right?
GUEST: (chuckling): No.
APPRAISER: I mentioned Ted Williams. Ted Williams had come back from the war. Um, he had some cards before the war, but this was kind of one of his earliest cards when he was back. And this is a very popular issue and a very great image of the Splendid Splinter here.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: And you have four of them, right?
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And, uh, these are great and very collectible. And in this type of condition, they could go anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 each.
GUEST: Each?
APPRAISER: Each.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: That's not bad.
GUEST: No.
APPRAISER: Right? Then we have Joe DiMaggio.
GUEST: Hm.
APPRAISER: He was also away during the war. He came back, and, uh, had a couple of years left in the league. And we have four of those, as well. And these generally sell in between $2,500 and $3,000 each.
GUEST: (chuckling): Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: So you see where we're going with this.
GUEST: (chuckling): Yes.
APPRAISER: Uh, and what's nice and interesting here, you can see there's a color variation in there. And this is something you see in this set, is that sometimes they change the color as they were printing them.
GUEST: So it's not a mistake, it was just a choice.
APPRAISER: Just-- or, or maybe they just ran out of a certain color...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: ...and they just kept printing. Now... (exhales): Rookie cards. Stan Musial, great Hall of Famer.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: You have four of his rookie cards right there. Those sell somewhere in the $3,000 range each.
GUEST: (quietly): Geez.
APPRAISER: Each.
GUEST: (chuckling): Okay.
APPRAISER: All right? And now we go to the all-time great, Babe Ruth.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: You have six of them, they look great. Those sell around $3,000 each.
GUEST: (quietly): Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: But here we go.
GUEST: All right.
APPRAISER: The most important card in the set.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: The rookie card of one of the most important people of the 20th century, Jackie Robinson. This is his, considered his rookie card.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: You have three of them.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Which is great, because these sell for between $15,000 and $20,000 each.
GUEST: (chuckling): Oh, my God.
APPRAISER: All right?
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And you got three of those.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Now, you also have a stack...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...of other cards here.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And there are rookie cards in there. Not along the same lines as these guys...
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: ...but really good cards. You do the math, you got something very significant here.
GUEST: (chuckling): Yeah?
APPRAISER: I would put an insurance estimate on just these 1948 Leaf cards, the whole collection here, of $150,000.
GUEST: (chuckling): Oh, my God. Okay, well, I guess a safety deposit box instead of a bureau.
APPRAISER: Just for all the viewers out there who are, like... These are not tacks. (chuckles) These are magnets.
GUEST: Oh, yeah.
APPRAISER: (laughing): They don't touch the cards. They, they just hold them up.
7. Stopping by a garage sale on the way for a morning cup of coffee...
📺 Episode: LSU Rural Life Museum, Hour 1
GUEST: About a year and a half ago, I was driving in the morning. I left to get a cup of coffee, and I saw a sign for a garage sale. It was about 7:30 in the morning. The lady was still unpacking some of the boxes. She was taking out this taller piece, and I directly was attracted to it, the form and the color. I knew it was something special. And I asked her how much she wants for it, and she said, "$50." And she told me, "I have two other pieces, if you're interested." And she pulled out those other two pieces. Now, I didn't have enough cash with me, and she reserved them for me. I went to the bank, grabbed $150, gave her the money, and took them with me home.
APPRAISER: Do you think that they're made by the same companies?
GUEST: The iridescence and the shapes and the forms look like they are from the same era. I was unable to find any information about them. There was no signature that I can find. I looked at them, but I couldn't see anything. I looked online to look for iridescent glass, but not much information, because there's so much out there, so...
APPRAISER: If you look really closely, this piece has a signature on the bottom.
GUEST: It does?
APPRAISER: But it's, but it's very, very faint. It says "LCT."
GUEST: Hmm.
APPRAISER: Which stands for Louis Comfort Tiffany. And it also has a little number on it with a prefix in front of it, M prefix, which indicates that it was made between 1898 and 1900.
GUEST: Wow, that old.
APPRAISER: The man who founded the jewelry store...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...had a son, and the son's name was Louis Comfort Tiffany.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And Louis is the one whose company made this type of thing. At that time, between 1898 and 1900, the name of the company was Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. And shortly after that, it became Tiffany Studios. This was actually called an Egyptian Onion vase. So, if you look at it really closely, the bottom really looks like an onion.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And then you see the leaves that would be coming up from the onion, under...
GUEST: Oh, yes. I thought it looks like a tulip, actually.
APPRAISER: Some people have called that type of vase a tulip vase.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: But it was actually an Egyptian onion. Tiffany was very fascinated by ancient forms of glass, and so, many of the early pieces, particularly in the 1890s, resembled something that was a form of what he thought was ancient glass.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So this is one of them. Now, the other two pieces were actually made by another company, called Loetz, which was an Austrian company. These are a little bit later, maybe five, ten years, at the most, probably made between 1905 and 1910.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: But they are very similar. And a lot of times, people mistake Loetz for Tiffany. Neither of these pieces are signed, which is usually an indication that these were meant to be sold domestically and not exported to the United States. Because when they were exported, they usually signed the bottoms "Loetz." But I recognized the type of decoration, so I was, it was easy to identify.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: This one in particular I really love, because it has these wonderful lappets. They almost look like lily pads.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And sometimes I think they're tadpoles. And, you know, it's, the, the jury's out on exactly what they were meant to be. But they're ve, it's very Art Nouveau in feeling. This particular piece, which is decorated in blue with these lovely oil splotches and the pinched form-- the decoration
is consistent all the way around-- this one, in a retail venue, would sell for between $1,500 and $2,000.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: This one also has a pinched form with consistent decoration. This one would sell in a retail venue for $3,000 to $5,000.
GUEST: Wow. (laughs) (chuckles)
APPRAISER: There are a number of great things about this Tiffany piece. First of all, the form, the color, and the fact that it's in remarkably good condition. A lot of times, people would put water into them and would leave the water and it would leave calcium deposits.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: This thing is pristine. It's absolutely perfect. And in a retail venue, this would sell between $6,000 and $8,000.
GUEST: Wow-- wow. (laughing) Well, I'm shocked. (laughs)
APPRAISER: The total for the three vases in a retail venue would be $10,500 to $15,000.
GUEST: Wow. (laughs) I can't believe it. (chuckling) I just can't believe it. $150 investment.
APPRAISER: It, it's remarkable, and...
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: You're really good at finding good bargains.
GUEST: Probably I need to start, uh, looking more often. Yes, well, thank you. Thank you very much.
8. Quite the graduation gift!
📺 Episode: LSU Rural Life Museum, Hour 2
GUEST: I brought my metamorphic library table. It was found in an antique shop in Huntsville, Alabama. My parents just thought that it was cool and it's something that I would like, and so they gave it to me as a graduation present.
APPRAISER: Ooh, you must be a special child to end up with this as a graduation gift.
GUEST: I tried to be good.
APPRAISER: I think you succeeded, clearly. It's got great veneers, a wonderful leather inset top with this gilt-stenciled border. And if you can see this sort of arched grain? It's, it's what we call crotch mahogany.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And it's really the Y of a tree, the branch that gives this great flamed figuring. It appears to be an English Regency writing desk. We don't know exactly who the maker is. Oftentimes, with period furniture, you don't find a maker's mark or a stamp. But what we can tell, in the English furniture directory, this is a known design. There's a cabinetmaker in London named Thomas Gillow. He created Gillows and Company a little later on, and this is sort of emblematic of his type of work. But you mentioned it was metamorphic. Why don't we show what this table's really about?
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: I mean, what, what a, what a fascinating piece. So if we take this and, and open it...
GUEST: Open it up,
APPRAISER: ...it's going to reveal a bit of a surprise, isn't it?
GUEST: Yup, and you flip that back, and you push these little wooden pieces to lock in the arms.
APPRAISER: And if we slide this down...
APPRAISER: ...you end up with a great set of library steps.
GUEST: Yup.
APPRAISER: You've got an oak interior, which provides great strength.
GUEST: A way to reach all of your books on the high shelves.
APPRAISER: Well, for me that's very important, as I'm vertically challenged.
GUEST: Me, too.
APPRAISER: And so this is, this is a great piece of furniture. And metamorphic furniture is something that carries a special interest in a lot of
collectors' hearts. It's a really fabulous surprise. Any idea what your parents had to pay for it?
GUEST: They paid about $1,600 for it.
APPRAISER: And do you think they were smart shoppers, good shoppers, or... What do you, what do you think about the value?
GUEST: I think it's certainly worth at least that to me.
APPRAISER: It's a really fine piece of furniture with a tremendous sense of detail that the cabinetmaker put this together. So for being about 220
years old, it's amazing that it's still in such great condition. If it were to come to auction today and be sold in a, you know, a New York auction house in the context of a library sale, I could easily see placing an estimate of $3.000 to $5,000 on it.
GUEST: Awesome.
APPRAISER: Not bad, right? It's...
GUEST: Not bad at all.
APPRAISER: That's quite a graduation gift.
GUEST: It is.
APPRAISER: Your parents, unfortunately, have set the bar pretty high. Now I'm thinking about my own children. What am, what am I going to have
to, to get them? I'm not sure I can top 'em on this.
9. Best moment, best guest reaction!
📺 Episode: LSU Rural Life Museum, Hour 3
GUEST: I brought "The Defenders" number one, page one, and I think it's from 1972. It's this page.
APPRAISER: And where did you get the page from?
GUEST: I bought it online. I was stationed in Iraq back in s, '06 and '07. I saw it go on sale, so I decided to buy it. And I believe I paid around 7,000 for it, which was a lot, but I had combat pay. So I used my combat pay to pay for this baby. I didn't see it for over a year. I had to wait till I come back to the United States.
APPRAISER: You are correct in that, yes, this is page one from "Defenders" one. When you first came to the table today...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...literally, I had to control my eyeballs from exploding out of my head-- that's how good this page is.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: Yes, absolutely.
GUEST: 'Cause no one else ever seems to like it but me, so... Yeah.
APPRAISER: Well, you've met the second guy that likes it. So I'm right there with you.
GUEST: Oh, thank-- yeah! Wow.
APPRAISER: Yeah. So, the Defenders, very interesting team of heroes when it comes to Marvel. While this is "Defenders" one, they were actually first introduced in "Marvel Feature" one...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: ...in, uh, December 1971. The Defenders were portrayed as the first non-team, really, when it comes to Marvel Comics, 'cause prior to this, you have the Fantastic Four, you had the X-Men, you had the Avengers. You have all these people that have come tobe, gether as a concrete team, whereas when the Defenders first came, your three initial members are the Incredible Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Namor the Submariner. From 1972 to 1986, the Defenders had a revolving door of characters that were included. I mean, you had Valkyrie, Son of Satan, and Luke Cage. They included Silver Surfer becoming a member officially of the Defenders in issue two.
GUEST: All right.
APPRAISER: But let's get to the page itself.
GUEST: Okay, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So you have Sal Buscema on the pencils, and you have Frank Giacoia on the inks. It's just such an eye-catching page. In really good condition-- it does have some toning to it.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Have you ever had this appraised before or anything like that?
GUEST: (chuckling): Um, yeah, it was probably about 2011, and it was for $400, which really disappointed me.
APPRAISER: Okay, well, I am happy to report that we're going to give you a lot better news...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: ...than $400 today. If this were to come up for auction in a properly well-advertised setting, I would put a catalogue estimate on it of $15,000 to $20,000.
GUEST: Whoa. (laughs) Whoa!
APPRAISER: And I wouldn't be surprised, personally...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...if that high estimate would be exceeded, if not doubled, because just as a comparison...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: You know, being original artwork...
GUEST: Yeah!
APPRAISER: Yeah, you're, get excited, yeah, this is awesome!
GUEST: Right, right, right, because I'm just, like, looking at this. That's more than I paid for it, and that $400, I was so disappointed, 'cause like, I love this. I, and I'm not trying to put prices on my paper babies, as I call 'em, but I didn't think it was respectful. That's how I felt. I appreciate it, you, I mean, I'm happy, 'cause... Baby, I knew, I knew you were worthwhile. (laughs) I really did.
APPRAISER: It's a great piece.
GUEST: I really-- oh, thank you, I love it.
APPRAISER: Recently, in 2022, the cover to "Defenders" one brought over a quarter-million dollars at auction.
10. "...I'm happy to have this piece of African American history."
📺 Episode: North Carolina Museum of Art, Hour 1
GUEST: About eight years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Maya Angelou, and... I just fell in love with her from my time when I knew of her back in my college years for her poem "Phenomenal Woman." And my wife's a huge fan of hers. And I met her in Winston-Salem. And unfortunately, she passed away not too long after I met her. They had a auction of her estate in Kernersville, North Carolina. I didn't even know she was a North Carolina resident. And she had told me how she lived in North Carolina, and she worked at, uh, Wake Forest University. And so I went through the pre-auction guide, and I saw these. The name of the award is the Spingarn award. Well, my mom went to Spingarn High School in Washington, D.C. She was the first graduating class. So I said, "Hmm, that's interesting." So I delved even deeper, and the first recipient of this w, award was my fraternity's founder, Dr. Ernest Everett Just. So the connection even, grew even more. This one is ten-karat gold. And, and I looked at who won this award, and it's a prominent award given by the NAACP to African Americans. Oprah Winfrey has one, Sidney Poitier has one. Martin Luther King has one. Harry Belafonte has one. Very, very many.
APPRAISER: Jackie Robinson.
GUEST: Jackie Robinson.
APPRAISER: Hank Aaron.
GUEST: Hank Aaron. The list goes on-- yeah.
APPRAISER: Paul Robeson, also.
GUEST: So I said, "I've got to have this." And so, uh, my friend went to the auction, and I was supposed to go, but my father had gotten sick. And so I got on the phone, and I was really willing to go as high as I had to go to get this. I thought it was going to go for at least $5,000, but it didn't. It went for around gold price, which was $1,100. Now, I had forgotten about this one. So what I found out was, they give two awards, they give one that the recipient walks around with.
APPRAISER: Right.
GUEST: And in case it gets snatched or gets stolen or something like that, or lost, you still have the real one. So my friend who was at the auction, he purchased this for me for $80. My 50th birthday came along, and he presented this to me-- I already had this one.
APPRAISER: I did find another auction record of a walk-around selling.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Uh, and surprisingly enough, it brought $3,000.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So, you know, for an auction estimate on the walk-around...
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: ...about $3,000 to $5,000.
GUEST: Wow, for the walk-around?
APPRAISER: For the walk-around.
GUEST(laughs): Okay.
APPRAISER: Now, you said...
APPRAISER: That's pleasantly surprising.
APPRIASER: Y, y... That's a good surprise. You said you spent $1,100 on...
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: ...that piece, and that was the gold value.
GUEST: Yeah, yeah.
APPRAISER: Well, good news is, gold has gone up.
GUEST: Absolutely.
APPRAISER: And the gold value on that piece now is over $2,000.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: But that's peanuts compared to what I think it's really worth. An important award-- I wouldn't be surprised to see it go in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.
GUEST (breathily): Wow, wow.
APPRAISER: Uh, I think that would be a, a fairly conservative estimate, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it explode even higher.
GUEST: Well, that's great to hear-- I, I wouldn't... It's something I won't sell. But I, I'm proud to be the guardian of it. But, um, it's great to know that it has a value, and I'm, I'm just happy to have it, and, and I'm happy to have this piece of African American history.
APPRAISER: And if you're keeping it, which is the plan...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...then you probably want to insure it.
GUEST: Yup. I will now.
APPRAISER: Um, something... I would probably want you to insure it for around $50,000 to protect yourself.
GUEST: Wow.
11. Ever heard of the 1870s rage competitive pedestrianism?
📺 Episode: North Carolina Museum of Art, Hour 2
GUEST: I brought a poster of the original Madison Square Garden. I believe it was built in 1879. I got it at an auction seven years ago in Lafayette, Indiana. I collect vintage posters, and I've never seen anything like it. So the event, I did a little research. It's a six-day race, and it was kind of a thing back then, which went away a few years later. So not too many people know about it.
APPRAISER: It's one of the things that when I saw, I thought, seems like a little too good to be true. Randomly, I was at a convention of the Ephemera Society of America a few years ago, and the theme of the convention was sports. And the speaker after me was talking about this thing I had never heard of before called competitive pedestrianism. And in the 1870s and 1880s and 1890s, apparently it was such a huge craze that it, it captivated the world, both in England and in America. And this piece is advertising one of the events in 1882 at Madison Square Garden. So for six days, 144 hours, men-- and in different events, women-- would walk around the track basically without sleeping for six days to see how far they could go. Over 530 miles they could do. It was extraordinary. Apparently, it was rife with gambling and fixes. There are some accounts of this 1882 event, and we know that the star pedestrian was a champion, the long distance world champion named Charles Rowell. And if you look closely at his belt, it says "Long Distance World Champion." Rowell, who went in as the world champion, ended up dropping out of the race, and George Hazel won. And as I mentioned, both that this was a hub of wagering and that it was phenomenally popular, people would rush the track. And so you have men guarding the track. Madison Square in New York City was first electrified in 1880. I found that Madison Square Garden installed 30 electric lights. So it's a history of technology poster also.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Also, Madison Square Garden was heated, right? This is February and March-- it would've been very cold. So it's a very early example of that happening. So this was a stone lithograph. And around the same era, in the early 1880s, the, the technique of chromolithography really became much more prevalent. And chromolithography was a technique by which printers could very affordably accurately recreate print images in multiple colors. But this was prior to that. That's why the colors here are so muted and, and not so prominent. So the lithograph was printed by the Mayer, Merkel and Ottmann Lithograph Company in New York. And it's hard to say how many were printed. Usually with a lithographic stone, we could expect probably between 250 and 500, I would think, before the stone wore out. So these would have been put up around the city. They likely might even have been sold after the event as commemoratives, but they were not the kind of poster that would have been glued up to, you know, lampposts or put up on, onto hoardings.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: They were small enough that they would have been visible in stores or windows. How much did you pay for it?
GUEST: I paid $400. Without the frame.
APPRAISER: There's no record of this existing. Not being able to find an example of this online, it's very hard to put an estimate on it. But in talking to some of my colleagues, both at the sports table and the collectibles table and at the historical prints table, we feel that at auction, conservatively, this would sell for $2,000 to $3,000.
GUEST: Oh, wow-- that's more than I thought.
12. What a difference a date makes!
📺 Episode: North Carolina Museum of Art, Hour 3
GUEST: I brought two jade tablets and a jade seal that belonged to my great great grandmother in California. She died in 1929, and at that point, my mother inherited them. I have been told they are 18th century from China.
APPRAISER: Mm.
GUEST: According to my mother, she may have purchased them in San Francisco, where she lived.
APPRAISER: They're mottled green jade. They're plaques or tablets. It's likely that the two on the screen behind the seal, were in fact, out of an album. So it may have been a jade-paged book. And they're incised with official script. And the seal, again, is green jade, surmounted with a double dragon and a, a cord. The seals are symbol of imperial authority. Most imperial seals that are done in this square form are surmounted with this double dragon. It's a very common motif on imperial seals or court seals.
GUEST: Ah.
APPRAISER: And the piece of jade is lovely. It's mottled. It's green jade. It's consistent with what would be used in the court. At the table, we– we had a long discussion about these objects.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And, firstly, we thought the plaques too were from the 18th century, but it's actually dated here… Guangxu, first year of Guangxu, which is 1875.
GUEST: Oh...
APPRAISER: And these are more than likely commemorative pages. There was an honorary mention of a previous ancestor. These jade book pages are not uncommon. They're more than likely two of a book of 12. Do you have any i-idea of value on the plaques?
GUEST: My mother had them appraised in 2007 for $1,400.
APPRAISER: And so let's move to the seal that's in front of us. There's a few characteristics that would indicate to us that it's likely not 18th century. There's a, a weakness of carving through the side here where you have these celestial clouds.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: If we look at examples of 18th century models, there's just-- everything is highlighted. There's a deeper lapidary carving to all aspects of the seal. It was indicative of the, the time frame, best materials, best lapidaries, best workshop, time most spent. And as dynastic China went into decline, so did its decorative arts. You'll see on the underside, it has two columns of script. One's a seal script and the other is a compressed script. But you'll see here in the carving of the impression that there are some mis-carvings to this side where the lines continued into the border.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: So there are a little weakness in the carving that leads us down the path of, of not being 18th century.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Its association with something dated 1875 would indicate it's possible that it is a late 19th century imperial jade seal rather than 18th century seal. We need to spend more time with it, we need to do, do more research. These things are, are problematic at the very best of times. If the jade book leaves came up at auction, I think the shared consensus is that they are imperial, or certainly very likely to be imperial. Together, as an associated pair, they would carry an auction estimate of $20,000 to $30,000.
GUEST: (laughs) Okay. Wow.
APPRAISER: Do you have any i-idea of value on the seal?
GUEST: Again, my mother had it appraised at the same time, uh, in 2007...
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: ...and the seal appraised for $1,400 also.
APPRAISER: Conservatively, at auction, it would carry an auction estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.
GUEST: (stammering) Uh... um, okay. All right.
APPRAISER: Um, and I think our takeaway was if there can be a shared consensus within the industry among peers, that it is 1875 to the, the end of Guangxu reign, that it may be a multiple of ten. So it may carry an a-auction estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
GUEST: Oh, is-is that all? O-Okay. Um, well, that's a little bit different than what I was expecting today, but… Oh, my. Oh, my. Thank you. That's amazing. Wow.
13. Personal notes from the "superhero of public television."
📺 Episode: Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Hour 1
GUEST: I went to a local auction in my neighborhood. I was bidding on what I thought was just a single postcard for Valentine's Day, Victorian era, and nobody bid against me, so I won for one dollar. And I picked up the postcard, and they're, like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, you won the whole box." So I got a shoebox full of somebody's life, and there was these postcards in it. And when I saw Fred Rogers, I thought, "That's the superhero of public television. That's got to be something very special." And when I started to read the correspondence, it's by him, in his hand, and he's writing to what I think is some family, and he's, um, asking about how they're doing, and, "Hey, do you think there's any market in the Cleveland area for my new show?" So I thought, "Wow."
APPRAISER: Well, I guess I can't help but say this, but it must have been a wonderful day in the neighborhood when, when... (laughs) ...when you bought that box of material. Mr. Rogers is obviously so iconic. One of the things that's really, really nice about these postcards is, they're in the mid-'60s. He started in television, children's television, in the '50s. He actually went to Canada, and in the early '60s, had the MisteRogers show. And he finally came back from Canada, and went to WQED in Pittsburgh in 1966 and started Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In this, he mentions ETV. They were a small network of Eastern public television stations to share shows. What he's saying in one of the letters that I particularly like, he was saying, "Okay, we have a few stations that have picked the show up in the Eastern educational, but do you think maybe Cleveland would pick it up?"
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Because they were obviously in Ohio. "I'd really like to see the show get expanded." And then, a few years later, 1970, is when public television, PBS, picked up the show, and that's when it started to really skyrocket. First of all, they're all signed, and this one is signed "Misterogers," "your friend." Now, the picture is wonderful, and it's what caught my eye. There's nothing written on the back of this. You got your money back.
GUEST: (laughs): My dollar?
APPRAISER: The dollar, the… You got your dollar back with this picture.
GUEST: Okay, fair.
APPRAISER: But… There are pictures on the other side of these. But two of 'em are the same, one's slightly different. Mr. Rogers signatures, especially where he's talking about his early career, talking about the problems of the show– thinking about the idea that, if they didn't pick it up, what we would have missed, the three letters, I would say, conservatively, on a retail value, is $1,500 to $2,500, Conservatively, as a package. And they're just so much fun, I, I mean, what can you say?
GUEST: (laughs)
14. "...her words in these papers are even more valuable."
📺 Episode: Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Hour 2
GUEST: I brought you many issues of the Saturday Visiter, a Pittsburgh newspaper
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: started in 1847-ish. Jane Swisshelm was a women's rights activist back in the 1840s and '50s and '60s. Also an abolitionist. And she really hustled to have this weekly newspaper in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
APPRAISER: She started in 1847 in Pittsburgh. Not profitable. And when she went to the printer, he s... he said, "Are you insane?"
GUEST: (laughs)
APPRAISER: And then neither one of them had ever worked with somebody of the opposite sex. They were concerned what people would think, so they actually took the shutters off the windows in the newsroom...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...so people wouldn't think untoward things.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: It's a fantastic collection of 40 or 50 different issues of the Saturday Visiter, published with the amazing tagline "Designed for the instruction and entertainment of the home circle and the promotion of moral and social reform." The Saturday Visiter was… had about 6,000 subscribers, according to Jane. They did publish the paper weekly. And it cost a whole $2 per year. There's also this little nugget about married women owning property in Pennsylvania.
GUEST: Right, right. We've been taught that we can thank Jane for helping to pass
legislation for… that women could then own property in Pennsylvania.
APPRAISER: When she got divorced, her mother died...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...and her mother's property went to her husband because she hadn't yet gotten divorced yet.
GUEST (inhales)
APPRAISER: Yeah. And her mom had changed her will...
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: ...when she knew she wasn't well, so that it wouldn't go to the husband. And it did anyway, and she sued. And she did get divorced in 1857, and she moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota,
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: started another newspaper, the St. Cloud Visiter, and then got into a dispute with a man in St. Cloud who had come from a slaveholding state and brought enslaved people with him. And she got into a fight in the press with him. And eventually an angry mob went to the printing office,
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: broke up her printing press, and threw it in the river. She gave up on Minnesota. She won the court case.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: She got her mother's land back. And she and her daughter fixed up her ancestral home. And then she wrote a memoir called Half a Century. There was a women's convention in Akron in 1851...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...the one where Sojourner Truth did...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...her "Ain't I a Woman"--
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Jane was there. She was there as a speaker.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And she wrote about it-- I mean, she was physically here in Akron...
GUEST: Right. Right.
APPRAISER: ...when that speech happened.
GUEST: It's amazing.
APPRAISER: It's amazing.
GUEST: It is.
APPRAISER: She fought with a lot of people.
GUEST: Yes. She was feisty.
APPRAISER: She got divorced.
GUEST: Well, she was feisty.
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: She was standing up for herself and her sisters.
APPRAISER: She was stand... she was standing up for herself in a time when that was, um, not really happening very much.
GUEST: Right. Right.
APPRAISER: I love stuff like this.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: These are what we like to call ephemera.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: They're ephemeral in the sense that they don't really call out to be kept. But thank God for the people who do hoard things and keep things, because now we could be here today.
GUEST: (laughs) Right.
APPRAISER: I would put an auction value of $3,000 to $5,000.
GUEST: (clicks tongue) That's wonderful. But I think her words in these papers are even more valuable.
15. The surprising history of Kashmir sapphires!
📺 Episode: Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Hour 3
GUEST: I brought in this pin. It was in my father's safe deposit box. And we had to open it when he passed. We actually had to, someone had to drill it open, and we found a bunch of jewelry that I had never seen before. And this is one of the things I found. I believe it really was my grandmother's jewelry. My family on both sides left Germany in the '30s in a kind of a hurry. And I believe, because of some of the other jewelry that was there, like a pocket watch, which I knew came from Germany. I believe this was from Germany as well.
APPRAISER: When I first saw this pin, there's something about how the light just hits that center stone and makes you go, "Whoa." Do you know anything about what that stone might be?
GUEST: My wife told me it might be a sapphire.
APPRAISER: Your wife is correct. It is a sapphire, and it's the kind of sapphire that, in the jewelry industry, we prize very, very much because, in my opinion, that color suggests that it's a sapphire from the Kashmir origin. In about 1880, there was a landslide in the Himalayas that unearthed this deposit of very high-quality sapphires. By about 1887, the mine had been depleted. I believe the last operation of getting stones out of these mines was in the late '20s, about 1927. So, these sapphires are quite rare. We can't know for sure without a laboratory report,
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: because what these labs do is they take a very high-quality, close-up, in-depth imaging of these stones, and they compare them to known samples from the area. So they can tell you with some certainty where they're from. However, in our experience, when you see the light hit that stone and you see that prized velvet blue, you kind of know it's probably gonna be from Kashmir. I would date the pin to about 1915. I think it's a classic art deco style with the Greek key and beautiful rose-cut diamonds. It's a cushion-cut stone. It probably, by formula, weighs about one carat. It's framed by some fancy-cut sapphires, as well. And I would like to point out there is one missing. To replace that stone, it's not going to be inexpensive to do. I can't determine where this was made because there's no marking on it that would suggest any country of manufacture.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And we did test it: it is platinum-topped 14-karat gold. So, to me, that suggests American manufacturer.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: So, who knows where it came from. But I'm, I'm, I'm very glad it's here. If we get that lab report, and it is a Kashmir sapphire, and it is about a carat, I would have no problem estimating this for auction in the $15,000 to $20,000 range.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness. I guess we're gonna have to reopen the estate. I'm gonna have to divide this three ways.
APPRAISER: (chuckling) Well, if the sapphire is not from Kashmir, I would still say in the $5,000 to $7,000 ballpark.
