♪ ♪ It's the best thing I have ever seen on the "Roadshow."

Oh my gosh, I love hearing that, thank you.

By far.

Wow, that's pretty amazing.

This got my heart pounding.

My brother's gonna want it back!

(laughs) ♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: North Carolina, the first in flight, was also the first place "Antiques Roadshow" saw Chinese jade estimates soar to spectacular heights in 2009.

No!

Oh, my gosh.

PEÑA: But did their value stay high in the sky or come down to earth?

Discover their financial fate and guess the price changes of other flea market finds and family heirlooms in this hour of "Vintage Raleigh."

GUEST: It's been in my family on my mother's side.

It was my great-grandfather's when he was little.

And it was in my aunt's garage and she just asked me if I wanted it.

And I said, "Sure."

And it's been sitting in my living room... (chuckling): ever since.

Well now, you played with this?

I did, but mostly my mother and her brother rode on it when they were little.

My children grew up riding on it.

We decorate it for Christmas every year.

Mm-hmm.

Looks great with reindeer antlers.

(chuckles) Well, he's a real charmer.

In 1861, a man by the name of Jesse Crandall, who is one of the great toymakers, particularly of riding toys for children, patented this design... Really?

...with this spring mechanism.

Uh-huh.

I think his company was in New York City, and Crandall started making this in the 1860s, probably stopped in the 1880s, 1890s.

But it was a radical departure, because most rocking horses were on rockers like this and rocked back and forth.

It has this monstrous, heavy-duty spring.

I mean, I can actually ride this.

It will hold a lot of, uh, avoirdupois.

But it is quite an amazing thing, and on this beautiful painted base.

Obviously, he's been through a lot of hard times.

Yeah.

But he still has an amazing presence, even though the paint is worn.

Just beautiful, flowing lines.

Great survivor.

And the last one of these I heard selling at auction had repaired legs and some other issues, sold for $1,600.

I think this one would be easily in that range and maybe as much as $2,000, at auction.

It's just stunning.

Think I could ride it?

Yes.

Let me see if I can give it a shot.

See?

There we go.

I mean, if it holds me, it could hold anything.

(laughs) GUEST: It was actually my grandmother's guitar.

She bought it from her brother right before he left for World War II.

With intentions of, uh, selling it back to him when he arrived back home, but a few things changed.

Uh, she kept the guitar, uh, passed it down to my father, and my father recently, uh, passed it to me.

At some point in time, somebody played this guitar a lot; do you know who did that?

Uh, it was probably a combination of my grandmother and my father.

Well, there's a good reason that they played it, because this is a great guitar.

This is a Martin-- the serial number dates it as a 1937.

This guitar comes from what they call the golden era of guitar making at the Martin guitar company, which at that time was in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and still is in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

Consistently, when you find a guitar from that period, they're built beautifully and they sound great.

The top is made of Adirondack spruce.

Later on, Martin switched to Sitka spruce, and that really adds to the interest and intrigue of this guitar.

The fingerboard is ebony, the back and sides and the neck are mahogany.

The bridge is ebony.

Okay.

What does affect the value on this guitar is that at some point in time somebody either refinished or over-finished the original finish on the top.

It's much more orange than it should be.

And if you look closely, it's not a great job.

It's got a beautiful neck.

It has original tuners, except for one, which is still a pretty old tuner.

It's probably a mid-'40s tuner.

All in all, a 1937 Martin from this era is considered one of the most desirable guitars for bluegrass, folk musicians.

So this is a great thing.

And I had the opportunity to tune it up before we came on, and I was... one of the reasons people like this guitar is that when you play it... (strums chord) ...it just sounds great.

(strums chord) (strumming) That's a world-class sound.

Right.

It's a beautiful guitar.

Condition does affect the value.

I think in a retail environment this guitar would sell for somewhere between $15,000 and $18,000.

Wow... (chuckling): Wow.

Nice.

If this guitar had nothing done to it, it would be worth approximately $35,000.

♪ ♪ APPRAISER: You're probably looking about George I, early George II about 1720.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, it's made out of walnut.

One of the great things about this chair is that you have a seat that's covered in what's called crewel work.

Uh-huh.

Which is of the wool stitching that you see on it.

And, as much as we can tell, it's most likely the same period as the chair.

Because of the crewel work, you're probably looking at about $1,500 to $2,500.

Uh-huh.

I brought a Testament that has a bullet hole in it.

That my great-great uncle carried during the Civil War.

And he was shot through the Testament and died at the Battle of Peachtree.

He actually had this in his pocket?

In his pocket, yes.

And this is a photograph of him?

This a tintype of him, yes.

We see tons of bibles on the "Roadshow," because during the Civil War, they gave out hundreds of thousands of them.

We don't see many like this.

If I was gonna insure this, and the picture, I'd insure it for $5,000.

Ooh, thank you!

That's wonderful!

GUEST: I obtained them when I purchased a home in a town in New York.

And they were in a garage, and the owner, when I bought the house, says, you, these... you can have these things, I don't need them, or take them to a dump.

And he told that the house once belonged to an artist named Dugo.

Andre Szenes Dugo.

I've been working with posters and with Art Deco graphics... Uh-huh.

...for over 13 years now.

Yes.

And I have never come across the name of Dugo, nor come across any of his works.

He had an extraordinary Art Deco aesthetic.

Yes, he did.

And what these pieces are, they are maquettes.

Hand-drawn, actually painted with gouache, with airbrush, and with some collage elements... Yes.

...studies for posters.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, these images were never actually turned into posters themselves.

They were merely the studies.

What we do know about Dugo, thanks to this wonderful scrapbook that you have, is that he was working as an actual artist in Europe at the time.

Yes.

And we see a collection of the covers he designed, for various magazines.

So even though these weren't realized, these maquettes are so wonderfully Art Deco, that I think they have some value.

How much did you pay for the house where these were?

This was in '69 or '78, and it was not very big, I think it was in the $40,000s or something like that.

At auction, I think each one of these maquettes would be estimated at $2,000 to $3,000.

Okay, making the total auction estimate for the six pieces $12,000 to $18,000.

Which sounds like it might've been almost half the cost of the house itself.

Mm-hmm.

This painting was given to my father from my great-uncle.

My great-uncle was a missionary in China.

From 1922 into the '50s.

When do you think he bought the painting?

It had to have been probably before 1937, I would think.

I think you know it's Chinese.

Yes.

And it's what we call an export painting.

Ah.

Most export paintings display some physical characteristic that identifies where it is.

And the three major port cities in China were Canton, which today is called Guangzhou... Uh-huh.

Okay.

...Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

This, I believe, is Canton.

On most views of Canton, what you see right here in the center are trading centers, which they call hongs, that will fly flags indicating the country, the nationality of the trading that took place.

In this picture, there are no flags in the center.

Hm.

However, if you look on the far right, what you see here is a French flag.

And you see a series of Western trading ships.

In addition, if you move back over this way, you see this sort of brown structure?

Yes.

This is one of two Western-built defensive forts.

Okay.

And if you look right around the edge, you see this sort of line, that's because this picture was originally in a smaller frame.

Really?

And that frame would have been black lacquered with gold trim around the edge.

We know it dates, from the presence of the flag on the far right and the general handling of the paint, to sometime around the mid-19th century.

Okay.

There's a whole host of different studios that painted these for Westerners who were stationed in these trading centers.

Okay.

They would be there from one to three years.

And they didn't bring photographs back; they brought back paintings to show their family and friends... I see.

...as mementos of where they were.

Wow.

Any ideas on what the value is?

I know you had it appraised.

Yes.

Uh, my-my-my father actually had it cleaned back in 1978.

Yeah.

And at that time he had it insured for, uh, $4,500.

$4,500.

Yeah.

Well, I think at auction you could expect to get somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 for this picture.

Wow-- wow, that's pretty amazing.

GUEST: This piece was given to my mother- and father-in-law as a wedding present.

and it was given to them by my mother-in-law's uncle.

He gave it to them with a plant in it.

My mother-in-law really liked the plant.

They say the plant was from Puerto Rico.

In fact, they thought the jug was from Puerto Rico for a long time.

Well, we have seen a ton of pottery today, and I expected that because North Carolina is one of the capitals of pottery making in the United States.

This is not North Carolina.

No, no.

It says "Virginia" on it, Petersburg, Virginia.

Mm-hmm.

But this got my heart pounding.

Really?

This one is very special.

As you can see, right across the front, it says "Henry Lowndes Maker, Petersburg, Virginia, 1841."

Mm-hmm.

Until recently, we didn't know very much about pottery making along the James River in Virginia.

Ah.

Uh-huh.

But the James River was the source of a lot of very nice stoneware.

And Henry Lowndes' father, Thomas, came from Staffordshire, England, 1804, 1805.

Okay.

And settled in Petersburg, and he began to produce pottery and stoneware.

Interestingly enough, Henry Lowndes died in 1842.

Ah... So this was a piece produced... Right at the end of his life.

...just before his death.

The piece is very typical of Lowndes' work, interlaced looping, decoration around the rim, the wonderful floral decoration... Mm-hmm.

...in brushed cobalt blue on the reverse side.

Recently, several of these Virginia pieces have brought some rather remarkable prices.

Is that right?

We would like to be conservative in giving you an auction estimate on this piece.

Uh-huh.

And so, is it any surprise if I told you this is worth, at auction, an estimate of $10,000 to $15,000?

Oh, you're kidding!

Oh, yes, that's quite a shock.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

Well, it's a wonderful piece.

Well, thank you very much.

And it's not from Puerto Rico.

No, it certainly isn't.

Well, thank you very much.

GUEST: Well, it's something that my wife inherited from her sister and her husband.

The artist is Robert Atkinson Fox, clearly signed here on the lower left.

He was born in 1860, he lived till 1935, and he was born in Canada.

Yet he's actually considered, for all intents and purposes, a Philadelphia artist.

During his lifetime, he had a tremendous output.

He's said to have executed over a thousand works, which is really something remarkable.

What's interesting also is that he had such a varied output of work.

He painted historical subjects, he painted sheep... He's really, in some ways, best known as a cow painter.

So a painting of a hunter with the ducks, I was surprised to see "R. Atkinson Fox" on the bottom.

(chuckles) It's a really interesting original oil painting.

It's executed on canvas.

The canvas, in turn, it looks like, although the back is sealed... Yes.

...has been laid down to a panel.

Through the years, having the glass on the cover, it's really done a great job in terms of preserving the painting.

Yes.

You've got an artist who's really prolific during his lifetime.

And yet, in terms of his output when it comes to the secondary market at auction, his works sell at auction, but not with great, great frequency relative to his output.

$15,000 to $20,000 is where I would see it in a good retail store.

Well, thank you very much.

APPRAISER: It is a Rookwood vellum, you can tell by that sort of gauzy finish that it has.

Right.

The, uh, marks on the bottom show that it's Rookwood, and you're also right about the date, 1914.

It's larger than most.

Uh-huh.

Okay, most Rookwood, uh, landscape vellums are a bit smaller than this, but it's really clear and pretty.

APPRAISER: Well, it's a Bacon Banjo Company banjo made about 1910, 1915.

I would say about $3,500, to $4,500.

Cool-- my brother's gonna want it back.

(laughs) (both laughing) I hope not.

He'll say, "Give that back!"

GUEST 1: I purchased them at a local antique store.

They appear to be, maybe, sheets from a music book that a choir may have used.

Possibly, they're on, uh, some kind of animal skin.

And we think they have some religious stories to tell.

This is, we think, St.

Agnes.

Mm-hmm.

And they were trying to burn her, and she wouldn't burn.

And then... We think this is Mary.

This is an icon to Mary.

Right.

I'm assuming it's Mary, because her face is so worn away.

Right.

And I'm assuming it's from veneration.

Well, that's exactly right.

They're pages from what we all a missal.

You can see the musical staves here.

It was a choir book, and they were large so the entire congregation could see them.

And they're probably French, around 16th century, 1550.

Okay.

These beautiful miniatures with the gilts and the illumination, and Mary, the intricate work, that's exactly what collectors want.

So they're very common without the miniatures, but with the miniatures they become valuable.

Okay.

What did you pay for them?

Um... $150 apiece.

Yeah.

So you have $300 into them.

Yeah, I actually didn't have enough money at the time, and I called my sister.

So it was a collaborative effort.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah, she was an art student at the time, so... Yeah.

Well, you did very well.

These are exactly what people are looking for if they want one example of a miniature, especially this large.

They're really well done as well.

Okay.

Um, I would very easily put these in an auction at $3,000 to $4,000 apiece.

Wow.

And expect them to do probably even a little bit better than that.

Okay.

So you guys did very well.

Wow.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Very much so, thank you.

I appreciate knowing.

Well, it's my mom's baby cradle, but she said that she would give it to me when I grow up.

We think it's dated back to the Revolutionary War in... 1776.

1776?

And there's also a story about it, how my mom got it.

When she was 15, she saw the cradle in the antiques store and she really, really wanted it.

And when she had enough babysitting money to, um, get the cradle, when she went there it was gone.

Aw.

And then after then, she was so disappointed.

Then, that Christmas, when my mommy went downstairs, under the Christmas tree, she saw this baby cradle.

And that's how she got it.

And there it was.

(laughs) And here's a picture of me falling asleep in it.

And how old were you there?

I'm about two weeks old.

I slept in it for six weeks.

And the reason why I, I stopped sleeping in it was because I learned how to move my arms.

Yes.

And every time I was asleep I used to do this in, in the baby cradle and wham my arm... Aw... ...on the thing that would make me wake up and cry.

And then they really didn't like that, so then I started sleeping in a crib.

(laughing) Now, the bottom on this cradle is loose.

There's a board here.

Yeah.

Why is that?

Um, because it was not safe for us to sleep in it.

So, my granddad, he got a piece of wood and he put it, put it in it.

Put it inside.

So... Um, so it would be safe for me to sleep in it.

So those nails wouldn't be good, right, obviously?

Yeah.

That.

They might hurt, right, a little bit.

This is an 18th century cradle.

And it could've been made around the 1770s or '80s.

It's made in America, probably made in Pennsylvania because it has poplar bottoms-- tulip poplar, and that's a Pennsylvania wood.

All these curves, and this little cutout, we think make it probably Pennsylvania.

And it's made of walnut, and cradles are really important in old times for rocking babies, obviously, and putting them to sleep.

Yeah, I rocked.

Sadly, we don't make cradles anymore like this.

Basically, babies are now cradled like this, in mommy's arms, like you're doing here with your baby.

Not exactly, I'm just holding her.

(laughing) Well, this is just a-a beautiful piece.

I don't know if you know about the value of this, what it's worth.

No.

I would put an auction estimate on this piece of $800 to $1,200.

Okay.

But you know what, it's really priceless because this is your family piece... Yeah.

...your cradle, and you were rocked in this when you were a baby.

And... So we're not really going to do... like, sell it.

Exactly.

It would just be passed down the family and all.

GUEST: My mother actually purchased them at a flea market or a tag sale back probably close to 40 years ago up in Connecticut, and, uh, she paid the grand total of six dollars per plate for them.

She was not really much of a collector of pewter, but the idea of breaking a set of pewter-- a-a set of anything, really, uh, bothered her so much as a, as a collector herself.

They are a wonderful set of American pewter plates.

They're made by Edward Danforth in Hartford, Connecticut, in the late 1700s.

Wow.

Just before 1800.

And you rarely find a set; they were always sold in sets, originally, but they usually got broken up.

One of the wonderful things about this set is they were well taken care of; if you don't take care of pewter, it will disintegrate.

Really?

And it will start to pit.

And when that happens, it really affects the value.

Oh, wow.

So you have a great set of six plates here.

The marks are exceptional; the Edward Danforth with the lion, and then, there are these marks down here, which were sort of similar to English touchmarks on silver, and the American pewters wanted to compete with the English, and make people think that although they were made in this country, they were still just as good as the ones made in England.

I see.

Pewter from this period has a lot of lead in it.

The lighter pewter, it was made with more tin, and it's called Britannia.

Edward Danforth was one of a family of pewters in Connecticut, in fact, some of them moved over to Massachusetts, eventually.

But he was one of the earliest, there were over ten members of the family.

That many?

Yes.

I don't know whether you noticed, but there's a little bit of discoloration here.

Yes.

It's pretty hard to tell, but this may be the starting of a little bit of corrosion.

The pewter that's in the best condition are pieces that were in kitchens over a stove, and all of the grease coming from the stove made a wonderful film on the pewter.

You just wipe off that grease... I see.

...and you'd get the most beautiful color.

Okay.

Of course, I don't know whether you realize, but pewter was considered the poor man's silver.

Yes, I had heard that.

And so they had it polished.

Mm-hmm.

You're very fortunate that she kept the set together.

Because they have a retail value of around $3,000.

Is that right?

Yes, mm-hmm.

Oh, my God.

APPRAISER: You brought in this, uh, great picture of Custer, but where did you get it?

GUEST: I bought it here in town at an antique mall.

And what'd you pay for it?

$325.

And it's in fact not an original photograph, and it was probably printed not at the time of Custer's life, but, judging by the photographic paper, about 1900.

I see.

That's not the important thing, though.

Okay.

The important thing is the letter that goes with the photograph, signed by Elizabeth B. Custer.

What's she saying in the letter?

She's describing his uniform and where, where the pieces came from.

Yeah, and that, and that's really pretty neat.

Mm-hmm.

She-she's describing where he got his hat, where he got his cravat... Right.

...where he got the, uh, the, the jacket that he's wearing.

She's providing all sorts of details about Custer, because she knew that everybody was interested in Custer.

Right.

After Custer was killed in June of 1876, Libby Custer spent the rest of her life defending her husband.

I really sincerely believe that Libby Custer is as much as responsible as anyone for the mystique that has grown up around George Armstrong Custer.

I would say at auction, this would probably fetch between $1,000 to $1,500.

Okay.

Okay.

So does that surprise you?

No, no, no, I'm-I'm very pleased.

GUEST: I bought it from a shop in Evanston, North Carolina.

Which was ran by Northwestern University.

And apparently, one of their curators had brought it back from New Guinea in the '50s.

And a friend of mine sold stones to them, and she told me it was there, went to look at it, couldn't afford it.

About a year later... What-what were they asking for it?

They were asking $6,000.

Okay.

And a year later, they were closing the shop, and they marked everything half price.

It was my birthday, $3,000, I bought it.

Do you have any other background on the piece?

Basically, it's from the, uh, Sepik River in, uh, New Guinea.

And what year did you buy it?

I bought it in, like, '76, I think.

Okay, it's a drum, it absolutely is Sepik River.

It's from the western Sepik, in the Ramu River area.

And this right here, the way that this head is carved... Uh-huh.

...that's diagnostic for Ramu River.

Now, historically, the Dutch were in New Guinea in 1820s, the, uh, Russians were in New Guinea by the 1870s, and the Germans were in there by the 1880s.

So there's been a lot of Western influence, and that's something that we have to keep in mind.

Uh-huh.

On pieces that are real early, they're going to either be stone or shell cut.

Now, if you look over here carefully at these very sharp edges, this is clearly metal cut.

So this is probably a mid-20th century piece.

Now, it absolutely is authentic, and if you look at the surface in through here, you can see it's been rubbed and beaten.

Mm-hmm.

And you'll also see traces of red... Right.

...which is also a color that's very typical of the Ramu River that they use to sort of enhance their objects.

So it's absolutely right, but it's a little bit later.

Mm-hmm.

So that's something that we have to take into consideration on value.

Now, the other thing, you'll see that it's got some condition problems.

We've got a fairly large gap here.

There's a big crack in the back.

Mm-hmm.

That also impacts it.

The other thing is we've got a pretty significant downturn in the economy right now.

In most cases, it's going to be an institutional client that will buy these.

Mm-hmm.

This thing now is probably worth $3,000 to $5,000.

If you had one that was, say, into the 19th century and it was done with shell or stone, it could be $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000.

Yeah.

I don't know whether that's good enough to make you beat the drum, but can you do it?

Oh, sure.

All right.

Anything.

(drumming) All right.

APPRAISER: Well, it's Chinese.

It's enameled porcelain, known as famille rose.

This would date from the late 19th century into the early 20th century.

Well-enameled, wonderful figural and animal cartouches to the side of the vase.

APPRAISER: What's great about this is that it's not a toy, it's a model.

You can see all the cast iron, fire helmets hanging on the side, all the ladders with all the different sizes.

This is your six-foot ladder.

This is your eight-foot ladder, your ten-foot ladder.

And it's a great scale model of a real ladder wagon that'd be ready for the fire.

A lot of these came from the Baltimore area that we see, but this one being from Newark is really interesting.

GUEST: When I was a child, they were stuck with a little thumbtack on the wall in my grandfather's kitchen, and later on I found them just loose in a photo album.

My grandfather is the heavyset boxer in the picture, and he was a boyhood friend of Edward Hopper.

And Edward Hopper was a very tall and slender man, and of course he didn't fare too well in the boxing match.

I like-- I like the tack hole in the drawing where it was tacked up on the wall.

On the kitchen wall.

As you know, uh, Edward Hopper's works have brought about $26 million to $27 million.

Yes.

But I don't think it's going to be worth quite that because this is not what he's known for.

Exactly.

That's right.

And these are kind of fun sketches, but 1900 is very early for him.

I think each of these would be in the $10,000 to $15,000 range at least.

Wow.

18 years old, and we can see he was a budding talent, but not in the boxing match.

I don't think he really stood a chance, judging from the drawing.

GUEST: This table has been in my family for seven generations.

It was a wedding gift from Thomas Jefferson to his first cousin's daughter.

And it always sat in our dining room, and at Christmas we'd put our Christmas village on it.

And it's just part of our family.

It has a connection to Jefferson, it sounds like.

Is there any documentation of the gift?

We can trace the family tree back to Jefferson, and it's just that's always been the family story, so... Okay.

A lot of times those sort of family histories are very helpful.

We always take them with a grain of salt.

We always look at the object and see if the object can help reinforce your own family history with it.

Oh, okay.

This is a Pembroke table.

A Pembroke table is a versatile form.

It can be placed in a collector's house in a lot of different places.

Mm-hmm.

Tell me what you think is the most interesting or striking part of the table.

The wear bars on the bottom side of the drawer that show how old it is.

Because when you flip it over, you can see that it was hand worked and that it's just got the wear marks on the sides that are down, you know, an eighth of an inch.

So I know that it's an old piece.

Well, you're right about that.

It's an old piece, and it's very carefully crafted.

You see the, um, the nicely shaped glue blocks here that are helping hold the drawer bottom on.

Mm-hmm.

You can see the cut here where they trimmed the edge off.

When I look at this, the most striking thing is the color.

Oh, is it?

And you've got beautifully oxidized yellow pine there.

Mm-hmm.

And it's a great sign of age on the piece.

Yellow pine is also what you would expect to see in a Virginia table... Oh, okay.

...or-or-or one of the different woods.

So that's a good first clue that your family history may well line up to what the table actually is.

Let's get this back in.

We also always heard it was American made.

Everything about the table does line up with an American manufacturer.

When was her wedding date?

I would suspect it was in 1774 to 1775.

Okay, well, I think the table probably dates more... based on the style and what we know of other tables... Okay.

It probably dates more to the 1790 or 1800 period.

Oh, okay.

To me, the most striking thing when I first saw the table was the inlay, which you see on all four legs.

Inlay was available to cabinetmakers through catalogs, and you could order it from specialized inlay makers that provided inlay to cabinetmakers.

You notice that subtle shading and color and the green background?

Yes, mm-hmm.

All of that suggests that that is something the cabinetmaker didn't do himself.

Oh, okay.

But then you get down to the bell flowers here... Mm-hmm.

And you notice they don't have the shading.

He's taken a chisel... Right.

and just tried to give the veining to the leaves and that sort of thing.

This little motif at the top, that motif turns up in other Virginia tables.

It has a rich, wonderful color about it.

The top is beautifully figured, as is the leaf.

There's one thing that tells me it may have had a later varnish put over it.

There's a little patch at the corner of this leaf... Mm-hmm.

...which is a common thing.

It's near the hinges, and oftentimes, they've got a patch there.

Sure.

But if you look closely, it has the same finish on the patch as it does on the other part of the table.

Oh, okay.

Mm-hmm.

What do you think about the brass pull on this?

I think that was probably added later, but I don't know that.

It was added later.

The nice thing about this replaced pull is that they didn't drill new holes in the drawer front.

I think that drawer pull dates to probably the 1880s or so.

Oh, okay.

And I suspect that's when the work was done on the table.

Okay.

So I-I think the table is confirming, at least at some level, the family history here.

Mm-hmm.

I think this is a Virginia table.

It may have been made around Charlottesville.

It could have come from the coast and traveled there.

But Jefferson, I think, was in Charlottesville at that... Yeah, he was in that area.

During-during that period.

Although I do think it postdates the marriage that you reference.

If you were to bring this table to auction, I suspect it would bring probably in the $15,000 to $25,000 range.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

I don't think the Jefferson connection impacts the value very much.

Oh, okay.

If this table was owned by Thomas Jefferson and we knew that he sat by this table or it was in his house... Mm-hmm.

...it might be worth ten times that.

Okay.

GUEST: This vase has been in my mother's family.

She was from Upstate New York.

It was her mother's, and my mother died five years ago at age 90 and she left this to me.

So, what prompted you to bring this to the "Roadshow"?

Well, it was very special to my mother.

Uh, it was the link back to her home area.

And on the base of it, very crudely etched, is the word "Steuben," and there is a second word, also crudely etched, uh, "Aurene."

What you do have here is an accurate piece.

This is a Steuben acid cut back vase, and it's blue aurene over dark blue.

It is a piece done by Frederick Carder, who was born in England and spent his time learning glass in England, and then he came to the United States in about 1900 and worked for Steuben in Corning, New York.

And he's considered a genius in glass.

The marking is down here, and it says "Steuben" and "aurene," and it looks very rough, the way it's put on, but that is a normal marking for Steuben.

The date for this particular type of work is 1925 to 1930s.

In order to get the blue aurene, they added cobalt to the glass.

And this particular piece is pretty wonderful because it has the sea, the waves at the bottom, and we have seagulls and the fish in the sea.

So it's a pattern piece.

The blue-on-blue is extremely hard to find.

Usually they'll be different colors.

This is a rare piece.

I would say that in today's market, we're probably looking at, in an auction, $6,000 to $8,000.

If you wanted to insure it, you would insure it at the higher end of that amount.

GUEST: These are my dad's from World War II.

And as you can see, he flew lighter-than-air.

These are some photographs.

This is actually a piece of the, uh, blimp skin with his name on it.

His wings, his dog tags, orders, and his flight log.

It's a really interesting group.

Let's take a look at his orders.

Here it says "Blimp Headquarters, Squadron ONE."

The U.S.

Navy was in charge of all lighter-than-air non-rigid airships.

The Navy at around World War II had about 200 of these.

They didn't perform a huge role, but the U.S.

was really the only power to use non-rigid airships in service during World War II.

They were used for air and sea rescue, scouting, mine sweeping and aerial photography.

They were also used for escorting, uh, convoys in the ocean.

Of the 89,000 or so ships that these airships escorted, not one was sunk.

An airplane could be in, in the air for maybe 12 hours, but an airship could be in the air for 60 hours at a time.

So it meant it could do a lot of duty, especially for scouting and minesweeping.

And we can take a look at the flight log.

We see that... your father flew on a number of different ships-- the K-82, the K-92, and that he was on minesweeping duty and air and sea rescue.

So he was doing some heavy duty around the coast to protect it.

What's great about this is in terms of completeness of a group, you have his flight log, orders that list the blimp headquarters, and then you actually have some period photographs.

And these are Navy press photographs.

Is this your father here?

Yes, sir.

It's really unusual to have a Navy press photograph with a family member in it, because generally you just have snapshots.

These were issued by the Navy for publication to promote the service.

And here's a great image of your father and a fellow sailor doing some repair work on the surface of a ship.

Here's another one near the, uh, monument for the Wright brothers.

And then we have your father's dog tags.

And these wings here would have been issued to all air crew member, you know, versus pilots.

The pilots and air crew had two different kinds of wings, and this one had places on top where it might have seen battle stars if he had been in combat engagements.

What's also great is to have an actual section of fabric.

Now, obviously this would have been painted with his name after the fact as a souvenir, but this would have been taken right off the ship and given to him, kind of presented at the end of his service.

So, that's what collectors like to see, is completeness of groups.

Now, I would put an insurance value on it in the $3,000 to $5,000 range.

That's fantastic.

Won't ever sell it; it's going to stay in the family.

GUEST: We actually bought that from Minnie Evans in 1969 and, uh, met her at her job as a gatekeeper at Airlie Gardens.

And after meeting her a few times, she invited us to her home.

We met her mother, some grandchildren and looked at her dream book, and we selected this picture from the dream book.

So, now, did she think of herself as an artist or as someone capturing the flowers and the animals around the garden, or... what-what was she thinking?

I think she thought of herself as a person who was a visionary.

In her dreams she saw these things and then put them together while she was at her gatehouse.

She would sit in there and draw these things with a pencil and then color them with crayon, cut them out and apply it onto another piece of paper.

Well, this is a iconic example of her work.

Minnie Evans, aside from her career as a gatekeeper, had a larger career.

In 1975, she had an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York... Mm-hmm.

And she was also collected by the very important surrealist artist Jean Dubuffet.

And she's come to have quite a reputation among American surrealism, American visionary art, American outsider art.

Do you recall how much you paid for the piece?

About $25.

Oh, my goodness.

Recently a piece was at auction that was estimated at between $800 and $1,200 and sold for $13,000.

Wow.

Yes.

So her stock is on the rise.

Yeah.

Given that, I would estimate the piece, at auction, between $3,000 and $5,000.

Mm-hmm.

For insurance at $10,000 and the retail value, I would think, would be probably between $8,000 and $12,000.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, well, great.

GUEST: It's originally... was given to me by my husband.

All of these represent different parts of my life, which I might add, the bracelet has outlived the husband.

We like to sometimes say "jewelry is forever, but the men aren't."

Always.

I, I have to agree a little bit about that, no offense.

This one is special, because each of the charms are enameled, and those are rare.

This charm bracelet has to be worth $3,500, at retail, if you were going to replace it.

Oh, that's very nice.

I still will keep it, because it's very special, but you made my day.

It's a piece I found almost a year ago in a thrift shop up in Winston-Salem.

And it is an armband.

It could have been a showgirl piece.

Oh... This is contemporary-- it's been made in the last 20 years.

Oh, okay.

It was made probably in Czechoslovakia.

GUEST: I have a Mickey Mouse band.

I got it from my mother's cousin.

She died, and we had to clean out their house, and this is what I found.

It is old; it's somewhere in the range of 1930.

If you look at Mickey's face, it's a long, pointy-nose Mickey.

The interesting thing about this is it's not made in Japan... Mm-hmm.

...which a lot of the material was.

This is better, this was made in Germany.

And this is porcelain bisque.

you can actually see where "Germany" is incised right into the back of the instrument, and each one of them is incised "Germany."

This is a great example of how the market's changed.

Years ago, this would have been worth a lot more than it is today.

The Disney market has changed a little bit towards the downside.

But it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a lot of value.

These are going to be worth anywhere from $150 to $200 per band member.

So you have six of them, so you're looking at somewhere between $900 and $1,200.

Thank you for bringing them in.

Wonderful, wonderful.

GUEST: We recently moved to a house, and my mother brought a bunch of my grandmother's stuff and my grandfather's stuff.

And, uh, in the box was this book.

And, uh, I opened it up, and it really appealed to me.

I really enjoyed looking at it.

My grandmother was the one who owned this book, and she was an artist.

She did a lot of painting and a lot of pottery throughout her life.

This is a net price list from the Malibu Potteries, which was a rather small outfit in California.

And they opened in 1926 or so.

And they were not in business for very long, maybe six years.

And this would have been shown to prospective buyers-- what the tiles were and how much they would cost at the time.

The lady who started the company, her name was May Rindge.

We do see this type of-of book, but usually in reproduction.

But this is full of these beautiful color images of tiles.

So it explains to you what their Moroccan tiles were, and then you have a lot of-- what they're called Saracen tiles.

These are all hand-colored, so painstakingly done, absolutely fabulous.

I want to show some of the very nicer ones.

Look at this.

This is like a Persian carpet, and it's all made out of tiles.

And look at this one.

This is my very favorite, iris wainscot.

It's such a beautiful Arts and Crafts statement.

And while so many of these other designs are Spanish revival, because that was what a lot of the houses in that area would have been in the 1920s in California, this is definitely much more Japanese.

I don't think I've ever seen this in actual tiles.

Some of the other ones you see from time to time, but they're all rare.

There's not many Malibu tiles out there.

While I don't think this is a unique book, I don't think many of these were made at all.

The value of this is hard to pinpoint.

I think at auction we would probably put this somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000.

Wow, that's great.

GUEST: From what I can tell, it's a-a stainless steel piece of sculpture on an aluminum base.

I acquired it from an estate auction in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, about six years ago.

It was displayed just like this.

There was no picture of it in the estate auction.

It was just a listing of pieces that were there.

It used to sit in our family room, and then I had to move it into, uh, my office, because my daughter decided to use it to bust balloons at a sleepover she had with some friends.

So after that, I put it in my office for safekeeping.

This is definitely alive.

It caught my eye immediately.

I have handled these before, I've seen the artist's work many times, but it's unsigned... Correct.

You had, you'd mentioned you couldn't find a mark on it.

Yeah, no marking, no symbol or signature or anything.

This is made by Harry Bertoia.

He was born in Italy and traveled to Detroit and ended up staying there, studying at the College for Creative Studies in, uh, Detroit, and then moving on to Cranbrook.

This was later in his career.

He started out making jewelry at first, believe it or not.

Really?

Wow.

And, uh, he was working in metals, and then with World War II coming on, metals were hard to come by.

Sure.

And he met some people at Cranbrook, Charles and Ray Eames.

Oh, yes, yes.

Of Eames Furniture.

Yeah.

So he started working in wood, which was, uh, easy to get during wartime.

Okay.

Sure.

Ended up with a company, Knoll Furniture, and they let him work in metals, and he was comfortable there and really came into his own.

Wow.

Later in his career, in the 1960s, he was doing this sort of sculpture.

He was doing, what these are called are spray sculptures.

Spray, okay.

It's steel rods, and they're set in an aluminum base.

Okay.

Any idea to the value?

I-I thought maybe it was one of his, but I wasn't really sure.

I paid ten dollars for it.

You paid ten?

Yes, sir.

All right, well, you did very well.

And I-- (chuckles) And I figured anything above that is lucky for me.

If this were to go to auction today, I anticipate this would bring close to $10,000.

Wow.

So that's quite a return on your ten dollar investment.

That's... that is, that is quite a return, oh, my gosh.

That's great, I'm glad you shared that.

Oh.

Thank you.

This is a movement sculpture.

Oh, yeah.

Can you give us an idea of how it-- how it can play?

Oh, yeah, we-we sure can.

If you just take it and grab it by the base... Okay.

And just give it a little touch... So subtle, you don't need much.

Oh yeah.

It doesn't take much at all.

And then it just goes for however long it wants to go.

GUEST: My father was in China two different times-- I think in the late '30s and sometime during the '40s, with the Army, and he was a liaison of some sort.

He was just a Kentucky farm boy, but he learned Chinese and he met a Mr.

Liang at 10 Jade Street, and that's pretty much what I remember him always telling me.

Mr.

Liang would call him and say, "John, I have some pieces you might want to look at."

As children, we heard that some of them had imperial seals, and then I just always have been curious.

Well, that Mr.

Liang must have been a very, very good friend of your father's, because he led him down the path of great collecting.

Generally, you see people who purchase things in China at that period of time, and they purchased things that were very, very poor quality.

These things are all of very, very fine quality.

You start with, basically, the runt of the litter in terms of these groups, is that bowl there.

And that's a bowl that's based on a style from India that they refer to as Mogul style.

And it's Chinese, 18th century.

Very, very thin carving, really beautiful, crisp workmanship.

This one here is the same style, but only a little more ornate.

This is also Mogul style, also 18th century.

So 1700s?

Yeah, they all date from the Qianlong period, which is 1735 to 1796.

This one here is set with a ruby in the top and very, very finely carved.

The animal is a thing they call "bixie," it means "to ward off evil."

And that animal is just a beautiful piece of celadon jade, wonderfully carved.

And then we have the top piece of the group.

This one has an inscription in the bottom that is imperial.

It has a cyclical date there, which they're kind of hard to read, because they run in 62-year cycles.

But it also has the mark "by imperial order."

Rather than just "made."

So it was made specifically for the emperor himself.

Oh, fantastic.

The bowl there, a conservative auction estimate on that bowl would be $30,000 to $50,000.

No!

Oh, my gosh!

A conservative estimate on this vase here would be $80,000 to $120,000.

Oh, I love this one.

This animal here, beautifully carved, wonderful quality, would be $200,000 to $300,000.

Uh... I can't believe you.

(laughs) And this bowl here, because of the imperial inscription, this would be probably very, very conservatively, $400,000 to $600,000.

Oh, I don't bel... Oh, my gosh.

For a total amount of between $710,000 to $1,070,000.

Damn.

It's an incredible collection, and he also bought at a period of time where I would doubt if he paid more than $100 for any one of these pieces.

Yeah, I'm sure you're right.

I just can't... I had no idea.

It's the best thing I have ever seen on the "Roadshow."

Oh, my gosh!

I love hearing that.

Thank you.

By far.

PEÑA: And now it's time for the "Roadshow" Feedback Booth.

We came to the "Roadshow," we thought we'd be rich, We found out we're not, ain't that a shame?

Uh... but we had a lot of fun.

I brought these screwdrivers, and I was just sure my dad had made them.

But Stanley did.

I came in with a $25 game board, but I'm leaving with a $250 game board.

Thank you!

Well, we've come to the "Antiques Roadshow" and brought a shoeshine box, which we found out wasn't worth what we paid for it.

(both laughing) And we've had a great time.

Haven't we?

Yes.

(both laugh) I brought my grandmother's beer stein.

It's from the 1900s, and it was valued at $35, and we had a great time.

And I brought this bracelet today.

Uh, it belonged to my grandfather's three aunts, and I found out that each little heart was from, um, a suitor who was interested in her, so she... um, they were very, uh, popular ladies.

(chuckling) I came to the "Antiques Roadshow" with hopes of becoming independently wealthy with my Fragonard porcelain.

Apparently my hopes have been dashed, and it's worth a couple of Happy Meals, or actually, a few more than a couple.

It's worth about $50, but I had a great time and thank you, "Antiques Roadshow."

PEÑA: Thanks for watching.

See you next time on "Antiques Roadshow."