OK–So I’m in love with this show. Each week I watch it and try to memorize every detail so that when I see some obscure collectible at an estate sale for 50 cents I can snatch that baby up, run home, and count my loot! No such luck yet.
I don’t think I have any “amazing find” lurking in my basement, however, I do have a few items I am curious about.
–a green glass bottle, about 1 1/2 feet with a stopper. Saw a similar one in a shop window for 85$, am wondering if mine is a reproduction?
and
–a Salvador Dali print of “Don Quixote” drawing, framed, matted, with an official looking seal on the back. I scored this while working at goodwill one summer in college. You wouldn’t BELIEVE the stuff some people give away.
Now, going on the assumption that they allow you to bring in two items for appraisal, what would YOU take? Anyone out there sitting on some potential buried treasure?
I have a collection of fabulous cast iron toy coin banks. Some have a lever to set a spring and then the coin get moved/tossed somewhere, like into a wishing well. Others rely on the weight of the coin as it goes down a slot to make something spin, like a balerina.
I went to AR when it was in Madison. I cheated and slipped in with three items. I took a metal butterfly and a small metal figurine that looks to me like a cross between a rat and an aardvark, that I got from my one dead grandmother. Then I also took in this glass fish thing that I got from my other dead grandmother.
The metal guy couldn’t tell me much of anything about the insect or the ratvark, but the glass fish thing turned out to be a Greentown Glass dolphin in amber, made at around the turn of the 20th Century. Appraised at $300-500 dollars, except that my clumsy ex-boyfriend broke a lid piece that goes with it. I emailed a Greentown Glass collector site and, according to the person who responded, the value for a mint condition dolphin is more in the $750 range. Luckily I have all the pieces of the lid, and if I ever have any money I’ll have it restored.
What was neat about it was the woman I went with used to live in the same town where the Greentown factory used to be. Interesting coincidence.
They do only allow two items per person. Which kind of sucks but it does mean you want to go back.
When I went I took a sabre and a hunting knife. The sabre is a Civil War era, non-presentation foot soldier’s model. It is worth about $1000. The hunting knife was a German blade from the 1870s and was worth about $1100.
We were going to go to the show this year when it was in Indy, but couldn’t get tickets. I was going to take a Peter Pan watch from the middle 60s and another sword I have, with an oriential design and an enameled scabbard. Maybe next year.
I have a Ginny doll dressed as a cheerleader. It was made in the late 40’s or early 50’s, it’s in the box (which is not in good condition at all, but it’s there) with a little booklet/pamplet showing their other costume dolls. The only thing wrong with it is that the little ball on top of her baton/stick has disintergrated.
For real?
I’m a big fan of British artist William Hogarth, and his engravings. He did one of his dog, with a portrait of himself, that I thought was pretty neat.
Years later, disgusted with the doings of some politicos, he burnished out his portrait and other parts of the copper plate and re-drew it with insulting symbols of ghis opponents. He also re-drew part so that his dog appeared to be urinating on the writings of his opponents. A waste of good copper, in my opinion.
Several years ago I was walking through an antique store, and came across a ripped copy of a Hogarth print. It was the one described above – not the nice, original first copy, of course, but the burnished and re-engraved scurrilous second state. But an engraving is an engraving, right?
The thing is, I think the one I have was struck off the original engraving – it’s the same size as the original, and you can clearly see the indentations where the paper was driven into the grooves. I don’t think this is a later reproduction (who the hell would want to reproduce this state of the print, anyway?) I know the odds are long, but not impossible (unlike my mother’s print – she had a copy of Hannah Cohoon’s Shaker “Tree of Life” that she thought was the real thing.)
So I’d be curious how much a ripped original print of a minor Hogarth work would be.
AR doesn’t have auctions. You stand in moderate to long lines to meet with appraisers expert in the type of item you bring (art, toys and games, glass, metal, weaponry, etc.). If your item is particularly interesting, you may be asked by the appraiser to appear on the show.
We have an old Swedish clock dated 1803 that came from my great-aunt’s house after she died. We’re not sure what side of the family it came from, but the interesting thing about it is that is only has an hour hand. I thought for years the minute hand had broken off, but a careful inspection of the face revealed there never was one.
Been searching Google for any information on the maker, but can’t find anything. I’d love to get a ticket to AR and see if anybody can give me any info on it.
My wife has a set of large (48" x 36", approx.) British classroom wall posters from the early/mid-1950s that she was given by another teacher who was retiring years ago. There are eight of them, each depicting a different more-or-less everyday scene, with as many common objects, professions, etc. as was practical crammed into each one. There’s a railway station scene, a Devon seaside scene, a London street scene, a family home scene, a business office scene, a farmyard scene, and a couple more I’m not recalling right now. They appear to be screen-printed on heavy canvas-textured paper (think of the pull-down charts and maps that science and geography teachers used a lot in the States thirty years ago), in a very 1950s palette – lots of teals, yellows, salmons, pale blues, etc. The drawing style is more or less classic late 1940s/early 1950s commercial art style with somewhat elongated figures accentuated by the clothing styles of the time (including extremely tight tailored skirts and jackets on most of the women, especially the secretary in the office scene who’s half-turned to look back over her shoulder at the boss as she walks out the door from his inner office to her desk outside). They were published by Longmans Green and Company, and we dated them to the early 1950s based on the style, and on the wall calendar in the office scene, which depicts dates as they fell in (IIRC) April 1953. We have the London street scene and the railway station scene framed and hanging in our living room and my son’s bedroom, respectively. I’m never seen anything like them anywhere else, and have no idea of their value (if any). They’re really interesting-looking and oddly compelling in their way, however, and seem just far enough off the beaten track to potentially interest the producers.
I have a dress from the late 30’s. It is very heavy silk in a very unusally gold/chartruse color. I’ve been told that it is a haute couture dress and was worn for modeling.
Bought it for eighty-five bucks and wore it to my Junior prom. A stunning dress with history for less than an ugly new prom dress.
My great-grandfather’s pocket watch, with original chain. Elgin, with an inset sweep hand, and on the inside back is engraved his name and November 17, 1909. Works, though the ivory (?) on the face has some scoring.
At an antique store located some 40 miles or so from my house,I spied a very nice model ship.I wasn’t really looking for it,but it did catch my eye.After giving all the other merchandise a look (it was all junk) I casually inquired,“How much for the ship model?”.
The proprietress answered,“Oh,seventy five bucks”,and as she came closer,the smell of marijuana smoke was obvious.
I hadn’t really wanted the piece,but for the price it was a steal.Now that I knew the price,I began looking at it in a far more serious way.
The ship is splendid.It is plank on frame construction,and entirely built out of exotic woods.I can’t determine if the hull is east indian rosewood,or brazilian rosewood.the decks are a combination of lighter wood and the rosewood of the hull.The masts and brightwork are all an exotic wood,which looks like angelum pedrum to me.In addition,even the deadeyes are handmade.
I did buy it.At first I thought only of selling it to cash in,but I’ve since changed my mind.It was hands down the best antique purchase I’ve ever made.I would not be the least bit surprised if it fetched something on the order of twelve hundred dollars or more at auction.
BTW I am a professional woodworker,so the wood guesses are informed guesses and not WAGs.
I would consider taking a 1918 edition of the book Raggedy Ann to the Antiques Roadshow. It used to belong to my grandmother. We also have an old Japense sword from WWII.
My grandmother’s hope chest. It’s a really lovely piece of art deco furniture (it was given to her for her High School graduation, in 1938), made of cedar, and incredibly well built. I just had it restored and the guy said that it could probably fetch around $3-$4K because it’s such a good example of West Coast furniture making.
Funny, my wife and I were just talking about this a couple days ago. She says, “I’d bring my little birdie locket,” which is a little sterling silver locket, about an inch in diameter, that she’d bought at an auction for $5.00. She’d done enough library research, by tracking down the mark on the back, to attribute it to the Vienna Workshop, but didn’t know the value. “Y’know,” says I, “you ought to do an internet search on the locket to see if you can find a value.” So she does, and in five minutes stumbles across an auction catalog listing the exact same locket, which sold for $1100.00. A true Antiques Roadshow success, but without leaving home.
So now we’re not really sure what to bring. Maybe the tall ironstone vase with the maker’s thumbprint accidentally stamped on in cobalt blue? Maybe her wedding dress (circa 1920’s tea dress)? Maybe the wall map of the Western front in WWI? I sort of doubt that any of these are worth more than we paid for them, but you never know…