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Overbeck Pottery Collection, ca. 1935

Value (2018) | $4,500 Auction – $5,500 Auction
Watch  

GUEST:
I had an aunt that collected the Overbeck, and then she decided that she wanted to commission the center guy there. So she had it made up. And that's how I got it.

APPRAISER:
We've got a newspaper article here that talks a little bit about Mr. Curry. This was a piece that your aunt had the Overbeck sisters do specifically for her.

GUEST:
Right.

APPRAISER:
Who is Mr. Curry?

GUEST:
Well, he's a runaway slave. Everybody knew Wade Curry. As I understand it, he was the first slave to be buried from a white church. It was a Quaker community, and, of course, the Quakers helped the Underground Railroad.

APPRAISER:
Right.

GUEST:
So...

APPRAISER:
And Mr. Curry was one of the messengers with the Underground Railroad.

GUEST:
And he was a messenger, and everybody just loved him. And so she decided that everybody needed to remember him.

APPRAISER:
Just a little history about the Overbecks. They lived in Cambridge City, Indiana, and there were six sisters. There are a couple of interesting styles. Some of the sisters were very well trained, and pieces like this small vase with the houses were done by Elizabeth and Mary Francis. Some of the other sisters did the little grotesque pieces, like Mr. Curry. And they're called grotesque characters because generally, they're out of proportion, and sometimes the more grotesque they are, the more valuable they are. We've got a praying mantis, we have a Southern belle, a colonial gentleman, and then we have this very interesting bowl with a flower frog that goes inside the bowl that sort of fall into the grotesque category. And then we go back to the vase with the houses on it, which is a little bit finer, and probably a little bit earlier. The praying mantis is really rather unusual. I think he probably, even though he's very small, might be $400 to $500. The Southern belle and the Southern gentleman, he has a little damage, but they're maybe in the $300 to $400 range each. The bowl with the flower frog, which is quite unusual, I'd say combined value of those two pieces-- they do go together-- is probably $1,000 to $1,500. Mr. Curry, who is one of the more unusual pieces because he is a commissioned piece, done from a living person-- I've only seen a couple like that ever-- I suspect he's worth close to $1,000 himself, maybe more in a good market.

GUEST:
Wow.

APPRAISER:
So that gets us down to the little guy with the houses. This piece is probably worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 to $4,000, maybe a bit more on a good day.

GUEST:
Goodness.

APPRAISER:
If all these were sold at auction, they would bring roughly somewhere between $6,000 and $7,500.

GUEST:
That's a lot of money.

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Appraisal Details

Appraiser
Riley Humler
Paintings & Drawings, Pottery & Porcelain
Humler & Nolan
Cincinnati, OH
Update (2018)
$4,500 Auction – $5,500 Auction
Appraised value (2005)
$6,000 Auction – $7,500 Auction
Featured In
Houston, Hour 1 (#1004)
Vintage Houston (#2319)
Event
Houston, TX (July 16, 2005)
Category
Pottery & Porcelain
Period
20th Century
Form
Bowl , Figurine

Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.

Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."

Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.

Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.

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More on This Appraisal

Article
Next of Kiln: The Overbeck Sisters
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