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Froelich Confederate Sword & Journal, ca. 1862

Value (2016) | $18,000 Auction – $22,000 Auction
Watch  

GUEST:
This was given to me by my grandfather. It belonged to his grandfather, who was a captain in the Confederate Army, stationed at Camp Lubbock in Houston, Texas. And he was a payroll master, and this is his sword, and this is his personal journal, along with payroll records. It opens up... he's drafted a love letter to his wife. He died of, in a measles epidemic, and so it stops in 1863, I believe. The first ten pages are an essay he wrote on education and the importance of education. And then he begins a personal daily journal of the activities at Camp Lubbock.

APPRAISER:
Yeah.

GUEST:
And then in the back of the journal it is payroll records.

APPRAISER:
Well, I'm glad that you brought... brought it in today. Because when you were walking up in the line, the three of us were just like... bing! We saw the hilt coming.

GUEST:
Oh...

APPRAISER:
So when you came up there, there was kind of... I don't know whether you noticed, but we were kind of rushing back and forth a little bit because we were so excited to see if it was an original or not. And actually it is an original. It's made by Louis Froelich out of North Carolina, and it's a staff and field officers' sword. It was made for the Confederate Army, as you can tell. We have the C.S.A. on the hilt. And one of the other things we look for on these types of swords are assembly marks. Now, inside of the sword... we have a mark here and a mark on the hilt. And those marks correlate so we know that these two came together. I'm assuming you added the...

GUEST:
I hung it from my mantel by the tacky chain.

APPRAISER:
I figured so. You've still got a little bit of original paint left. The rest of it's fairly worn, but it's still in wonderful condition compared to what we normally see.

GUEST:
It was used.

APPRAISER:
Right, oh, it was definitely used and it fits his rank. The sword alone without any provenance, without the journal, would be in the vicinity of $12,000.

GUEST:
Whoa, whoa, whoa. (laughs)

APPRAISER:
Now, now you have to add in the journal and all the provenance you have. And we felt at the table, we discussed this for a little while after we wiped up the drool, that at auction we would put an estimate of $18,000 to $22,000 on the grouping.

GUEST:
Wow.

APPRAISER:
Yeah, yeah, it's that great.

GUEST:
That's wonderful.

APPRAISER:
I mean I'm sitting here talking with my hands. Give me another pointer and I'll be like Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops. It's... it's just crazy, it's great stuff.

GUEST:
This is great.

APPRAISER:
Yeah, well, thank you for bring it in today.

GUEST:
So glad I held onto it, and so glad it's still legible.

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Appraisal Details

Appraiser
Joel Bohy
Arms & Militaria
Bruneau & Co Auctioneers
Cranston, RI
Appraised value (2016)
$18,000 Auction – $22,000 Auction
Featured In
Orlando, Hour 1 (#2116)
Event
Orlando, FL (June 18, 2016)
Category
Arms & Militaria
Period
19th Century , Civil War
Form
Diary/Journal , Scabbard , Sword
Material
Metal , Paint

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.

Verbal approximations: The values given by the experts on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW are considered "verbal approximations of value." Technically, an "appraisal" is a legal document, generally for insurance purposes, written by a qualified expert and paid for by the owner of the item. An appraisal usually involves an extensive amount of research to establish authenticity, provenance, composition, method of construction, and other important attributes of a particular object.

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