Welcome to Antiques Roadshow from Washington, D.C. Men, I suppose, would just dance for eels.

I smell something fishy.

No pun intended.

I'm shocked!

Oh, my gosh.

I never would have guessed that.

Whoo-hoo!

We're discovering America's best antiques and collectibles one treasure at a time.

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♪ ♪ (firecrackers exploding) ANNOUNCER: Now, the people who make Antiques Roadshow possible.

Welcome to Antiques Roadshow.

Hi, I'm Mark Walberg, in Washington, D.C. You may know this place was named in honor of President George Washington and explorer Christopher Columbus, but did you know it's the only American city established by the Constitution to serve as the nation's capital?

Let's see what treasures with Washington connections turn up today.

WOMAN: I found this in a Georgetown antique store on the floor, kind of hidden in a stack of other paintings, and I just found it appealing.

I didn't know anything about it, and I just wanted it and bought it for not very much money.

It had to be far less than $200.

Maybe even $85.

And how long ago was that?

About 15 years, I think.

Well, it's a charming and remarkable piece.

And you talked a little bit about the title of it, Dancing for Eels.

Yes.

Yes.

What do you know about that?

I had never heard of dancing for eels, but what I found out was that in the mid-19th century, at the Catharine Street Wharf, black people would-- men, I suppose-- would just dance for eels.

And I can't imagine.

I guess there are places where, you know, people eat eels.

(laughing): Yeah.

I know that.

But it just seems so interesting.

And it was in the history books, but it took me a long time to actually find a reference to dancing for eels.

Right.

I, too, did a little bit of research, and what I discovered is that this particular composition goes back to a drawing that was made in 1820.

And what it was depicting was enslaved African Americans who went from New Jersey to the Catharine Street Wharf Uh-huh.

to sell produce.

And they joined free African Americans in New York and danced for eels.

Oh, my.

So, what's interesting to me from an historical context about this is here is something that was depicted in the 1820s...

Yes.

...and this picture dates to about 1880 or 1890.

Oh, my.

So it's a subject and a composition that has a long popularity in American culture.

And what I particularly like about this one is that you've got the figure of a child on a stool, you've got musicians in the background-- one playing a banjo, you have the dancers, people standing in the background, you have a smokestack behind the wharf.

This painting appears to be done on canvas, laid over a tin backing, and the paint medium is oil paint.

Mm-hmm.

With the lines that you see in the roof and in the wharfing scratched into the paint surface.

I think in today's market, at auction, we're talking about something that would sell in the range of $6,000 to $9,000.

Oh, my!

So your investment... (laughing): Oh, my goodness.

...really did well.

Oh, my.

(laughing): I'm shocked.

Yeah.

WOMAN: My great-aunt, Savannah Beck, went to Carlisle Indian School in the early 1900s.

She and two of her brothers and a sister and a cousin all attended the school.

As far as I know, she's the only one that graduated, with a degree in practical nursing.

My mother inherited them from Savannah's daughter.

Okay, so it came through the family.

Came through the family.

And you know the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded around 1879, Right.

and it was basically the first off-reservation boarding school for the Indian families to send their kids to.

And what you brought here is phenomenal.

I know it's just a small portion of an enormous archive that you have.

The key to this whole setup that we put together, as far as I'm concerned, is you have her diploma.

Right.

So right out of the chute, you're putting your provenance stamp on this archive.

You're saying, "Hey, this is my family member.

"Here's her diploma.

She graduated in 1909."

Right.

And we have a wonderful booklet here, which is the commencement exercises for 1909, and all of the printing of these booklets was done right there at the school.

Right, all of the students did the printing for all of the events on the campus.

What we have in front of us in these two pictures is an absolute Who's Who of football history.

This is a 1903 team photo from the Carlisle team.

And over here on this side, that's a picture of probably the most famous football coach in football history.

That's Pop Warner.

Right.

And he coached that team.

And over here on this side, you have a picture of Art Sheldon, one of the most famous people in football history, known for the hidden ball trick.

Exactly.

And a photo like this is just incredible.

To top that off, you have a photo here of probably the most famous person that ever went to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Jim Thorpe.

Yes.

Jim Thorpe was probably one of the greatest, not just football players, but athletes in American history.

What's wonderful about this is it's a phenomenal photo of him and to add even more to it, on the back, Jim signed this in 1912, and that's to Savannah Beck.

Savannah Beck, yes.

That's your aunt.

And he signs it here, "All-American half back, 1911."

It's absolutely incredible.

This is a photograph at an early stage of his career Right.

autographed by him.

This is something you just never, ever see.

You know, when you try to give an estimate on something like this, it's virtually impossible to be real accurate with the quantity of material you have, because every piece has a value.

Exactly.

Every piece has an historic value.

Easily I would estimate this as an archive at auction, with these two pieces obviously being the centerpiece of that collection, at $15,000 to $25,000, at least.

And I think I'm being quite conservative when I do that.

Because a Jim Thorpe piece like this could sell for $5,000 to $10,000 by itself.

Rare, rare stuff.

And amazing that it's been kept together for this length of time.

I mean, it's just...

I'm astounded and I'm really thrilled that you brought it to the Roadshow today.

Thank you.

WOMAN: I inherited it from my mother.

She probably purchased this 60 years ago, Okay.

60 to 65 years ago.

She got it at auction.

Do you know what she paid for it?

Well, my mother was known never to pay more than $200 for anything at the auction.

Oh, that's wonderful.

If we turn this upside down-- well, I'm not going to go all the way, because it's very heavy...

Right.

Can you see the "Daum Nancy" on the bottom?

Yes, and I had never known that there was anything on the bottom before.

I guess I never looked.

It is a signed piece.

So that tells us that this is a Daum piece from France, circa the late 19th century, into the 20th century.

The Daum brothers actually started out making tableware and glassware and covers for dishes... general household items.

And then they went to this, which is amazing.

We have an acid-cut piece with floral design.

We have butterflies, we have gilding, enamelwork, and these are cabochon glass jewels.

This is very, very unusual to have glass jewels and we have them around the piece.

The piece is 25 inches tall, which is monumental in size.

I know, it's...

The color is a sunshine yellow.

I would put this today in a range of $18,000 to $25,000, with the higher end likely being more of the retail end of the market.

Wow.

It's a beautiful piece.

I always see people that say, "I can't believe it," but I can't believe it.

But it's wonderful.

Ooh!

I'm going to be very careful when I take it home now.

Yes.

WOMAN: A friend in Sacramento was a collector of pop art in the '60s, and she acquired some lithographs of Warhol and asked me if I'd like to buy one, and I said yes, and I don't think I paid a great deal for it at the time.

What would "not a great deal" be?

Do you think it's... would you have spent more than a few hundred dollars on this, do you think?

Oh, $25 to $30.

Okay, and this was back in the late '60s?

'65, somewhere there.

It's a print by Warhol, and you can see the signature in ink down here and the date, '65, for 1965.

This is one of his classic early images, produced as an announcement for an exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York.

It was an exhibition of his flower paintings, larger-sized canvas paintings.

This announcement, as an offset color lithograph, was used in the gallery for clients, people coming into the exhibition, and it was issued two ways, both hand-signed by him and unsigned.

And unsigned, oftentimes it was folded into four and used as a mailer.

There were only about 300 of these that were hand-signed by the artist.

Warhol was known for appropriating popular images and turning them into art.

You might think of the soup cans, the Brillo boxes, all these everyday things that he made into fine art.

And this is some of the earliest example of that.

What you have is one of the real classic Warhol images from the earliest part of his career as a pop artist.

It's a photograph that he found in Popular Photography of hibiscus flowers, which he then added the color to, and it's very sort of 1960s colors.

Yours happens to be in very good shape.

The colors are as impeccable as I've ever seen them.

You have a little bit of staining down here, which shows best on the orange flower.

But the water staining is entirely reversible.

And the signature is a wonderful, strong signature.

Sometimes that's faded too, because it's a ballpoint pen and ink.

All in all, if I had to rate this condition-wise out of ten, ten being the best, you're at, like, nine and a half.

Oh, really?

For what we normally see on the market.

A conservative replacement value on this, if you were to go out and buy it now, would be in the neighborhood of about $30,000 to $40,000.

You're joking.

No.

Oh, my God.

MAN: Well, I inherited them from my great-uncle many years ago.

Well, I'll tell you a little bit about them.

They're what's called Limoges enamel.

And so they're made in a region of France called Limoges.

These, although they're decorated in the Renaissance style, they're from around about 1880 to 1900.

Unfortunately, there are some condition issues we have here on the top.

And you've brought a second one, which also has some condition issues to it as well.

Even in the condition that they're in today, they're still quite desirable, and I would expect the pair to sell at auction between around about $1,200 and $1,800.

Really?

Yes.

WOMAN: My great-grandfather was a surgeon in the Civil War.

And he retired afterwards to Denver, Colorado.

And there is a story that this was either a wedding gift or a gift of thanks for surgery by a Navajo chief.

And through a book my sister gave me, I believe it's an Ute chief named Colorow.

It says that the two of them used to sit together and share war stories.

Colorow was indeed a Ute chief.

He lived from about 1808 to 1888.

Do you know when he purportedly gave this blanket to your relative?

No, but it would have been after the Civil War.

After the Civil War, okay.

1866 is when my grandfather went to Denver.

Okay, well, what we have here is a Second Phase chief's blanket made by the Navajo.

They started making these striped blankets early in the 19th century.

The first blankets were just simple stripes, with... usually with indigo, the natural white and the natural dark brown.

And they actually did call the First Phase chief's blankets Ute blankets, because they traded a lot of them up to the Utes.

They were also traded up to a lot of the Plains tribes during the 1860s and '70s.

Now, the Second Phase blankets incorporated this box-and-border design.

We think they started making Second Phase blankets in about the 1840s.

Your blanket, I believe, dates probably to the 1850s.

Oh.

The dyes are a beautiful indigo and then a natural dark brown and a natural ivory.

The reds are a speckled, probably a cochineal, a natural dye made from bugs.

And they started doing that early in the 19th century.

This blanket looks like it was well used.

There's a lot of restoration.

And the restoration looks like it was done in the 19th century.

Those repairs were done probably before your grandfather got it.

Really?

Yeah.

So it came like this to him.

I think so.

I think the white man gave them the term "chief's blankets."

Okay.

And that was mainly because they traded them out to other tribes, and a lot of times, the only person who could afford it, like with the Utes, would have been a chief.

They usually traded them for horses, from my understanding.

If this was gifted to your relative for surgery, it would have been a really expensive gift, because the Ute chiefs really treasured these blankets.

The fact that it belonged to Colorow, who was a Ute chief, that adds some value but not much.

These are very desirable blankets, Second Phase chief's blankets.

In this condition, without any restoration, I think your blanket could easily sell at auction for $60,000 to $80,000.

MAN: I brought in some items that were in my grandmother's trunk, and she died in 1983 at 101 years old.

This Bible, letter and button were in a little box, and they were given to her in 1895 from an aunt.

And who did they belong to originally?

Gaston Baldwin was in the Fifth North Carolina Cavalry, and when he left for the war, his sister gave him this little testament.

And he was in the same regiment with his cousin.

Well, he was killed at Goodall's Tavern and his cousin retrieved the Bible and mailed it back to his sister with the letter, and that's about all I know.

And Goodall's Tavern was a battle in Northern Virginia.

Paper was in short supply, and rather than having a separate envelope, they actually folded the letter up and wrote the address on part of the letter itself, and it has the Richmond, Virginia, postmark as well as the Jefferson Davis Confederate stamp.

The letter almost brings tears to your eyes when you read it.

It's about what?

It's about his death, and it's consoling his sister.

Right.

It tells about the Bible and it tells where he was buried.

He was buried in Dr. Goodall's garden, and then it was written, apparently, on the battlefield, because he states at the end of the letter that "the bugle is sounded to saddle," and "I must cut this short."

And there's a couple of lines in the letter that really strike home.

It says, "I have his testament, "which was in his breast pocket at the time he was wounded.

"The ball struck the edge of the book, and on the book is some of his precious blood."

And if we actually look at the side of the Bible, you can see not only the crimson from his blood, but you can see the damage from the bullet as it struck the Bible.

And you can tell by the tone of his voice when you read the letter that he had lost one of his best friends.

These letters were what the family dreaded to hear, but at least you knew what happened to him.

In the box there was this little button.

What do you know about the button?

I don't know if it was from his uniform, but they were kept together all these years.

When you look at that button, it has a sunburst, and that's a very popular button from the state of North Carolina.

And on the back, all they did was solder on the brass shank.

Mm-hmm.

That's great, if all you're worried about is making the button.

The button's survival, it didn't help it at all.

Because you can imagine it wouldn't take much at all to pop that little brass shank out.

Mm-hmm.

Therefore, the survival rate on the buttons is small to have the shank.

This one is extremely rare.

Oh, really?

Most of the cadet buttons that you see, 99% of them that were used by cadets from Southern institutions were made before the war and lost during the war.

This is the rarest of both worlds.

It's a cadet button that was actually Southern made and used by a Southern cadet school.

This button today, even in a down economy-- and the button market is way down-- that button alone would retail for at least $5,000.

Steep price for a button.

(clears his throat) The letter and the Bible, they're both wonderful pieces, and because they're family, they're priceless.

For the three pieces, I would insure the group for $10,000.

Well, I sure do appreciate it, and I am amazed at the value of it.

WOMAN: It came from my grandmother's jewelry box, and I knew nothing about it.

I inherited it in 1988... Mm-hmm.

And I've wondered what it is ever since.

The first thing that I think we need to do is figure out what the function is.

And why don't you pick this up and take it apart and show us how it works?

Okay.

You twist it, and it does come apart.

So you've got a sharp pin here at this end.

So it's actually what's called a jabot.

At the early part of the 20th century, which I believe this dates from, women would wear large shawls.

And you'd gather the shawls here, because you didn't want them to fall off.

And you'd have this pin that would go through the shawl, keep it in place.

Now, as to what the materials are, the bright green and pale green carved spheres at either end actually is a stone that's called jadeite.

Not jade, but jadeite.

Jadeite.

That's a different kind of composition from jade.

And the type of carving that's in the stone is of clouds and some foliate devices.

The carving and the size of these indicates that this was from China.

And these were taken from a necklace that would have been about 17, 18 inches long.

And that type of necklace is what is called a court necklace, and it was worn to indicate status within the civil service or the military service in the Chinese government.

Wow.

Now, the rest of the material here, the stones-- those are actually rubies.

Wow.

And they're beautiful rubies.

And then these little sparkling bits, that's not glass, those are old mine diamonds.

Wow.

And holding all this together is platinum.

You're kidding.

No.

And as we looked at this-- and I did this with my colleague Kevin Zavian over in jewelry-- we were looking for a signature.

It's not stamped.

Okay.

Which happens sometimes.

However, based on the design, the style and so on, I think it has to be French, made certainly by an amazing craftsman.

What I love about this is the intermixture of using Asian materials by Western craftsmen, which was so popular the early part of the 20th century.

Is this something that you want to keep in your family?

Yes.

Okay, so I'm going to give you an insurance value for this.

If you went to buy this today, this would be at least $10,000.

Ten thousand dollars?!

Ten thousand dollars.

Wow.

I'm shocked.

(laughing) I am shocked.

That's great-- fantastic.

APPRAISER: You collected these with your wife?

MAN: Well, yeah, her... she's an artist, and she had a show, and her partner in the show's mother had an antique shop.

And since I helped her frame her painting she gave me this one as a present.

That was in the early '70s.

Wow.

I now have a collection of 50 or 60 of these panes, plus two lamps like this, another lamp shade, and I have old beer mugs.

So it's been a 35-year collection, I guess.

Lithophanes are fascinating things.

They really don't look like much until you light them up.

Absolutely.

So I'm going to light up this one closest to me first.

Now you can see it in all its glory.

The first stage of the process requires carving out layers of wax on a glass plate.

Yes.

Which was often illuminated or mirrored from beneath.

And there's a considerable amount of artistry and skill in them.

And throughout Europe they made them beginning-- no one's entirely sure when they started-- but we tend to think it's the late 1820s.

The one I'm illuminating here has a mark on it from the Meissen factory in Meissen in Germany, so they were made at the highest levels of porcelain making.

Although most of the factories that made them were in nearby Dresden or throughout other parts of Europe, and made at a lower standard than the Meissen factory.

They did make large quantities of them.

Once you'd made a mold, you could kind of press them out and away you go.

We often see them like this with kind of romantic Victorian scenes because many of them were made in the mid-Victorian years-- 1860 to about 1880 or '90.

The lamp, I think, is a little more unusual than most.

The majority of lithophanes are simple panels, usually very thin, up to a quarter-inch thick, but typically closer to an eighth of an inch thick.

So very fragile and brittle, but you don't see them very often in color.

The lampshade, I would say, is really the lithophane part here.

These lampshades were sold independently.

You could put them on whatever.

That's what I did here.

You put these two together, did you?

Yeah, I got the shade, and then we went hunting for something that would be a good base for it, and we found this in a shop.

They told me it's about the same era as the shade.

They told you correctly.

We call that, in my business, a marriage, when two things are put together, but I'm going to say this is a very happy marriage.

It's okay in this case because the shades were sold independently and you did exactly what was intended.

This one, by the way, is French.

There's a little mark inside it, which is hard to determine, but the coloration of it, and everything else about it, it's clearly a French one.

That's good to know.

What's the most you've ever paid for a lithophane?

I paid $150, I believe, for the lampshade in the late '80s or '90s.

I paid about $60, $75 for this.

And these lithophanes I average probably $50 to $75 apiece when I bought them.

Okay.

Well, I think you did well.

They're one of those things though that have not done remarkably well in terms of gaining in value.

When something is very Victorian like this, very ornate, I certainly admire it, but it's not modern taste.

So these-- a nice screen lithograph like this today would sell at auction for probably less than $400.

I would say anywhere between $200 and $400.

A Meissen one like this, about the same as a single panel, perhaps somewhere between $200 and $300.

And if it weren't Meissen it would be less than that, less than $100.

I would say, today in a good auction, that lithophane shade lamp is going to bring at least $700 or $800.

So I think you did well.

I thank you very much.

MAN: I saw it in an antiques store in Old Town Alexandria.

And they had a whole bunch of different weathervanes.

I like weathervanes to start with, but a fish I had never seen before.

I'd seen, you know, horses and all kinds of things.

And it just looked really interesting and it kept kind of calling to me, the way things do.

And I went back to it three times and it was still there, so I thought... At the show, right?

Yeah.

This is about six years... how many years ago?

2004.

And it was sold by a dealer to you at the show.

What was it described as?

He said it was late 19th century, early 20th century from the Boston area.

Okay.

And he said it was a codfish.

Did he mention a company that it was made by?

I think he did, but... Was it Fiske or something?

Fiske, that's right, yeah.

You mentioned Fiske.

I saw the... J.W.

Fiske.

The reason I know is when you came in, I saw part of the receipt.

May I ask what you paid?

I paid $17,500, which was quite a sticker shock, I have to say.

When I did first see this come in, I smelled something fishy, no pun intended.

I smelled something fishy in the sense that I look at vanes all the time, Sure.

there's a tendency for people to want to make a vane look older.

It's very easy for any collector to look at this and think it's an old vane.

And you've been a collector.

At the same time, part of the Roadshow's job and our journey is to educate.

So I want to say that right off the bat.

I feel that it is not a late 19th century copper weathervane.

Weathervanes go back to Greek times.

And the farmers, for centuries, they've used it.

The original weathervanes, ones that are authentic, are really made and balanced so that they could be used, okay?

Later vanes that were made to look like old vanes don't care about that because it's just a decorative object.

It wasn't made to actually function.

If you look at the whole thing overall, it has a heaviness about it, it has a lack of detail that you see on the vanes that are made new.

And, most importantly, the surface, on the original vanes, they did all kinds of things.

They painted them gold originally.

That wore off down to the copper, and then it became this wonderful verdigris, oxidized copper, which everybody loves.

This vane has a combination of just stuff put on there to make it look old.

And what I think this weathervane is is a new vane that was made honestly, and then someone faked it up to accommodate the weathervane market, which is very high right now.

Right.

An Indian weathervane recently sold for over $5 million in New York at auction.

This was a couple years ago.

Sure.

And certainly fish weathervanes have brought up to $100,000.

So there is incentive; there is, you know, motivation.

Yeah, reasons.

For unscrupulous people to make something look older than it is.

Also, very importantly, the seams here are just bent over and probably glued inside.

On the early vanes of this type that were made by Fiske and other people from the 1860s to 1910, 1920, they would be soldered in lead and then it would be filed, right, smooth.

And I think that make sure that you buy from a dealer with a guarantee, that guarantees his merchandise.

And, and... Yeah, I'll be checking into that.

I figure that.

I have a number of pieces from... From one person.

...that person.

Well, you know... Hopefully this is the only dud, but...

This would probably have a value in a shop of...

I kind of hate to say this, but you're probably guessing it's not going to be a lot.

(laughs) No.

It's a decorative value of about $500.

Well...

So that's really what it's worth.

$17,500 versus $500-- it's, you know, close.

Close... (laughing) There's a big difference in between, I know.

I have a feeling you're going to get the money back.

I'm going to be optimistic.

I hope so.

We bought those chairs in Utrecht in the Netherlands when we were still living there.

This must have been around 1960.

And we went to the States in '74 and we took the chairs because we loved them a lot.

Well, as you know, they're made by one of the 20th century's most famous designers, Gerrit Rietveld.

Did you know Gerrit Rietveld?

Yes, we could see him once in a while on his bicycle going through the city.

So we certainly knew him.

He didn't know us, Right.

but he was famous.

He was very famous.

Even now in the 21st century, there's a whole new generation of collectors and furniture lovers out there that recognize how wonderful his furniture is.

These chairs are wonderful.

They're called crate chairs.

Gerrit Rietveld started in the teens, actually.

He was part of the De Stijl movement.

About 1917, 1918, he designed a couple of very famous chairs.

But these chairs are interesting because they're actually made by one of the men that worked for him.

Do you remember his name?

Yes, his name is van der Groenekan.

I won't even try to pronounce that.

But this gentleman started making furniture in the 1920s.

1925 or so he started making furniture for Mr. Rietveld and actually continued it forward into the '60s, didn't he?

He did, yeah.

He was his carpenter and he was still making the chairs.

And he lived in De Bilt, a little bit north of Utrecht, where we used to live.

And we knew him.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we visited him and he made those chairs for us.

Not only are they great modern chairs and really kind of have that wonderful modern feel, Rietveld was very famous for kind of contracting chairs to their most elemental levels.

He reduced them from being fancy and kind of feathery to being the most simple examples he could think of.

Pine tends to be soft and wears a lot.

It's easy to scar, it's easy to scratch.

But this chair has absolutely fantastic condition.

What I love about these chairs is is they have tags on the bottom that you bought them from his carpenter in 1960.

I don't know what it says.

It was his address.

It was his address?

Okay.

So we have a great provenance.

Rietveld has become one of the most well-known names in the modern world.

What did you pay for them all those years ago?

We probably paid like 200 guilders.

I think that must translate to $60.

About $60?

Yeah, at that time.

At auction, these chairs will probably bring about $4,000 to $6,000, conservatively.

That is surprising.

Yeah, I like that.

WOMAN: I went to an estate sale.

They said there will be political memorabilia, which I collect, so I got very excited.

The person whose house it was at, it was a biographer of Richard Nixon.

He was a reporter and a writer of books.

That's the fellow, Earl Mazo.

Correct.

And what did those items of political ephemera cost you?

I bought a pile of letters for $20.

Not a bad price.

Not at all.

And amongst those is this letter we're looking at now from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Very characteristic signature, very strong signature.

Written on stationery, "Martin Luther King, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama."

And dated September 1958.

Really right at the heart of the civil rights agitation nationwide.

Very turbulent period.

I think King was quite disappointed in Eisenhower and his take on the civil rights movement.

And there's a lot of speculation at the time as to his views on civil rights and what might he do if he became president.

Because it wasn't long before all these currents kind of came to a head during the Kennedy administration.

But there's some remarkable passages in this letter.

On Nixon he says, "I'm coming to believe that Nixon is absolutely sincere "in his views on this issue.

"He happens to be a Quaker, "and there are very few Quakers who are prejudiced "from a racial point of view.

"I also feel Nixon would have done much more "to meet the present crisis in race relations than President Eisenhower has done."

And then on page two, after a very, very detailed analysis of Nixon and his policies, he concludes, "I would conclude by saying that if Richard Nixon is not sincere, he is the most dangerous man in America."

What a striking phrase to use.

I know, this is quite amazing.

Well, content is extremely significant in valuing a piece like this.

If I was doing an insurance appraisal, I would put $10,000 on it.

Oh, wow.

It's one of the best Martin Luther King letters I've ever handled.

Thank you for rescuing it from that estate sale.

A pile of papers in a folder.

Well, this piece came into my family we think about 1890s.

Okay.

It was my paternal great-grandparents'.

My mom and dad had it, and mom decided she wanted to sell it without telling the family.

A-ha.

She said, "Oh, I put the desk in the paper."

And I said, "What?

Why did you do that?"

I was very kind of upset she was selling it.

So I talked to my teenage daughter and I asked her if she could disguise her voice and call Grandma, pretend she was somebody else, Right.

and say that she wants to look at the desk.

So she did that, and a little while later, I called my mom and said, "Oh, Mom, how are you doing?"

She said, "Oh, I'm fine, I'm so excited, somebody called to see the desk."

So we went over, and Mom's all excited, waiting for the woman to come, and then I had my daughter disguise her voice and talk like she did on the phone, then my mother realized we were the ones who wanted to buy it.

What was her reaction?

She just laughed.

She thought it was really funny, so... Now, did Mom name her price?

She didn't name her price, so I said, "I could give you $100 a month."

How many months was that?

I think it was May to October, so it was about $600.

Okay.

Seems like a fair payment plan, that works.

Yeah, yeah, and it kept it in the family.

Well, what I love about this is the fact that it's all very architectural.

This is a piece that embodies the aesthetics of the 1870s in a great way.

Okay.

And if you look at the piercing on the gallery here, Yeah, uh-huh.

on both sides and up top, all of that is drawn very much from early gothic architecture.

Oh.

There's a company called Kimball & Cabus that was working in New York during that period.

They exhibited at the Philadelphia Exposition, and they exhibited things very, very similar to this.

I think this is probably made by that company in the 1870s.

Now, we don't have signed pieces, but we have parts of a catalog that pictured a lot of what they were selling, and they're very much working in this aesthetic and in this taste.

It's made out of walnut top to bottom.

The hinges and mounts on it are silvered or nickel-plated brass, so it was meant to be very showy.

So from a value perspective, I would say at auction, this piece would probably bring $3,000 to $5,000.

Wow.

That's great.

So your $100 a month investment paid off handsomely, and I hope your daughter enjoys it, and from there on.

It looks like a nice old finish, and I wouldn't do anything to it.

I'd just keep it like it is.

WOMAN: My mother inherited them in 1959 from my father's aunt.

And this ring has never been appraised because no jeweler has known what stone it is.

But you had all these appraised?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, when you brought this to me this morning, you really shook me a little bit.

Because this is not a stone.

I'm going to surprise you.

It's a pearl.

(laughs) And it's called a quahog pearl.

It comes out of a clam, not an oyster.

And people that eat the clams, once in a while, find a purple pearl.

Uh-huh.

It's a natural pearl.

They're very collectible.

They're not worth a lot of money, and they come as large as quarters.

Uh-huh.

Now, today, a pearl like this with the diamond ring all included, is worth about a thousand dollars.

Okay, that's beautiful.

MAN: It's either crocodile or alligator.

Crocodile, I guess, bag that was my grandfather's, I think.

Found it in my father's attic in 1989 and have kept it under a sideboard for everyone to look at and to collect dust.

Well, it's definitely crocodile.

And you can tell because the size of the scales and the color.

This is the center back of the crocodile and it's very unusual to see a piece of crocodile luggage with the spines, the whole back.

And the piece is marked.

Let's flip this around.

Carefully.

Okay.

And if we open it up, right here there's a little insignia that says, "W.B."

from New York.

And then below it it says, "Made in Austria."

And the inside is in incredible shape.

It's beautiful leather.

It's possibly pigskin, I think.

And the two pockets are really nice features.

And I would date it anywhere from 1890 to 1905.

This is a handmade piece of luggage.

And it's heavy.

The Austrians were known for the luxury crafts that they made at the time.

It would have been a really costly piece.

This type of a valise is extremely rare.

Because of its age and slight wear, but extraordinary shape and patina, I would say that at auction this would sell for between $3,000 and $3,500 at least.

It's a really great piece and I hope you don't let it collect any more dust.

Well, I certainly will take better care of it than I have.

Oh, good.

I inherited it from my father.

My father was a lawyer in general practice in Connecticut.

A woman came to him to handle a divorce for her, and he took the case and he got her her divorce.

And when he sent her his bill, she said, "Oh, I don't really have any money, "but I have some valuable art, "and I am going to give you this beautiful Picasso plate, which is worth a great deal more than your bill."

And he was an art lover.

He never had it appraised or looked at by any authority.

He believed her.

He was quite taken by her.

He always described her as "a classy lady."

And whenever I see Picasso plates in a museum or in a book, I look and some of them look very similar to me.

Many goats.

But I really don't know anything about it.

About how much do you think his bill might have been and about what year was that?

Well, it was in the 1960s, and I would doubt it was more than $500 or so.

This is a Picasso plate.

And, interesting enough, I talked to another appraiser and he visited the pottery in France in the 1960s, and he said at that time he bought a couple of small pieces.

And he said he probably didn't pay more than $10 or $20 each.

This was very affordable when it was new.

This pottery was made in southern France in a place called Vallauris by the Madoura Pottery.

And it was made between 1947 and 1971.

All of the pieces were designed by Picasso, but he didn't actually make them himself.

He would design the plate and then the pottery would make it to his specifications.

And these would have been made in series.

They would have made a whole bunch of the same plate.

In the hundreds, usually.

Each one was hand decorated.

So if we had another plate next to it, we would see, perhaps, the colors would vary a little bit.

Or the way that they were painted on would vary somewhat.

Another wonderful feature about this is the way that the design, the slip is raised.

Very much like handmade pottery.

It's gotten quite dirty over the years.

If you washed this with some warm soapy water, it won't hurt it at all.

Now, of course, they're not the same thing as an original painting, original drawing by Picasso because they were manufactured in some sense.

But they were made in a limited amount of time and he had a very close connection to them.

These were made within his lifetime.

What we look for, first of all, is size.

This is a really large size.

There are some pieces that are quite small.

This one has a lot of color.

Some of them are just very monochromatic, but this has some splashes of blue, a nice splash of yellow.

And this is figurative.

He liked goats; that was a common theme that he used in a lot of things.

So the goat is a great decorative appeal.

Uh-huh.

Small pieces will start in the high hundreds, low thousands.

But I talked with several other appraisers here and we believe that if this were sent to auction, it would sell for between $10,000 and $15,000.

My goodness.

I really am...

I really am surprised.

I'm sorry my father isn't here to hear this.

WOMAN: Well, it's my grandmother's clock.

Passed it down to my mother and my mother brought it home.

And now my mother's passed, so I've got it.

Do you know what type of clock it is?

Do you know what it's called?

We always called it a banjo clock or grandmother's clock.

Well, it's a Willard's patent timepiece is what we call it, but in the trade we do call it a banjo clock, so that would be the correct name.

But it's not a grandmother's clock.

That refers to a shorter tall case clock, actually.

Do you know who made it?

No.

I tried to read what's written; it's too worn, I can't read it.

It's very difficult to read, it is.

But if you see enough of them, then you sort of can get a feel for the signature, and it says, "Aaron Willard, Jr." on the dial right across here.

It does?

Yeah.

And then below that it says "Boston."

And that's the location in which it was made in 1815 to 1820.

I don't see a lot of these clocks.

In fact, this is the first Aaron Willard, Jr. banjo clock I've seen since I've been doing the Roadshow.

Which is even more rare is the fact that these tablets are survivors.

They're original to the clock.

They're original?

Yeah.

And that's very rare for a banjo clock, especially a first-period banjo clock.

The reason why is that the weight cord was originally made of animal gut.

Now this has a braided nylon in it.

But animal gut would deteriorate, dry out, and eventually would fail and the weight would come crashing down and break out a glass, either the throat glass or the bottom glass or both glasses.

But today it's not a concern because we use a braided nylon that doesn't deteriorate.

So was it replaced?

It was replaced at some time.

His uncle, Simon Willard, was our country's most famous clockmaker, and he was actually responsible for the patent of this clock in 1802.

It's an American design that he invented that made clocks more affordable and more compact.

His father, Aaron Sr., was very famous as well.

But it has this beautiful acorn finial at the top.

It has these wonderful Aaron Willard, Jr. hands that are three-dimensional and they're handmade.

It has a little minor flaking in this area, but not a big deal.

It's not in the artistic portion of the glass.

That can be restored and it can be done very well.

One of the condition issues with this is this is called a gilded rope front.

That refers to this rope molding here as well as all around the throat glass.

That's regilded, as well as the finial.

It's been regilded some time ago.

I don't know how long ago, but it's not original to the clock.

But a fantastic piece.

In a retail setting, this clock would sell from $8,000 to $10,000.

Really?

Wow.

So it's a beautiful piece to have.

WOMAN: This is a tea service set.

My mom had it on a sideboard in the dining room growing up.

The only thing that I really know about it is that it came from an elderly woman that she befriended.

The woman kind of looked at my mom as a daughter because she didn't have any children.

My mom worked at a private school up in Connecticut, and supposedly the woman's house was one of the original houses on the campus and that's how they became friends.

And my mom loved to entertain and the woman gave it to her, and she... my mom used this entertaining.

What do you think it's made of?

It looks like silver.

It's heavy.

I have no idea whether, you know, there's silver plate.

I have no idea.

My mom said that, you know, it might be Tiffany, but looking at the bottom, there's no "Tiffany."

First off, sterling.

And it's not Tiffany.

Okay.

It's made by one of Tiffany's best competitors, and that was a firm by the name of Gorham.

Okay, oh yeah.

And Gorham is from Providence, Rhode Island.

Oh, okay.

Around 1895, when the Art Nouveau movement starts coming alive, Gorham looks at some of its chief designers and says, "Hey, we've got to get some of that cool stuff, too."

And there was a man named William Christmas Codman, Mmm.

who they assigned a very special task to.

And the task was, "Get the finest designers "that you can find, finest craftsmen you can find, and we want to make a new line of silver."

And that new line of silver was called Martelé.

Okay.

And that is what is written on the bottom.

Yeah, okay.

Uh-huh.

On the bottom, it has here "Martelé."

And the Martelé symbol and the symbol it has with Gorham symbolized that it was a very important line of silver.

There are three small letters.

Each piece was individually tracked by Gorham in a book called the "Martelé Book."

Okay.

And the Martelé Book actually says, sometimes, who it was made for, whether or not it was a special piece, a salesman's piece.

This is probably made sometime between about 1898 and about 1905.

And the reason we know this is because around that time period, there's a great deal of interest in organic forms.

Each piece was handcrafted.

It took about 140 hours to make a coffee pot.

Oh, my goodness.

All one of a kind.

You're kidding.

Which was very interesting.

Each piece is hand hammered, and that's where the term "Martelé" comes from.

Martelé, from the French verb meaning "to hammer."

And they say it's like the softy mist of a hammer.

So each piece was gently hammered out.

You notice there's not a lot of ornamentation to it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a little restrained.

But that was the whole theory behind Martelé was.

It was natural; ornamentation took a back seat to form and function.

You got the whole kit and caboodle here.

This was always meant to be a single set with tray and all six pieces.

Mmm-hmm.

And what is this?

Oh, these are ivory insulators Okay.

so you don't burn your hands when you pick up the pot.

Okay, that's interesting.

See, it's on the hot pots.

Yeah, yeah.

Tea pot, coffee pot, hot water kettle.

And then why are those two different colors inside?

That's actually a gilded interior.

This is a creamer.

This one's a creamer.

Here's your covered sugar.

Right.

That's for the loose tea.

Interesting, okay.

Because in these days you banged out your loose tea in the waste bowl.

What do you think it's worth?

I kind of came in here thinking maybe it's like $10,000.

For insurance purposes, I would put $90,000 on this.

You've got to be kidding.

I am not kidding you.

Oh, my gosh.

I never would have guessed that.

Whoo-hoo!

That's amazing.

That is amazing.

That's incredible.

It's a beautiful set.

Nicest set I've seen.

Really?

Yeah.

You made my day.

We're getting a big bottle of wine then tonight.

Sweet.

You're watching Antiques Ro adshow from Washington, D.C. WALBERG: And now, it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.

And I brought this cool corkscrew.

And actually they said they liked it.

It's worth 50 bucks, and I had $5 million worth of fun today.

So it was a great experience and I had such a good time.

I came to find out what these things really are.

We were told they were Chinese fighting gloves and nobody could really give me an idea of what their value is or what they were used for.

But they're cool.

(screeches) Ah!

And we brought this dental instrument that has been in our family.

It's a tooth puller appraised at anywhere from $500 to $700, dating back to the 1700s.

So for anyone who hates going to the dentist, all I can say is cheer up, they could be using something that looks like that.

We brought our friend the bear and found out that he's worth three to four as it sits, and one more piece of documentation it'll be worth close to $10,000.

Yeah!

And we came to the Antiques Roadshow thinking our item would bring us on a round-the-world cruise, but it maybe will get us on a water taxi across the Potomac.

If we're lucky.

I'm in the "Did Not Make It" Booth.

My book was six dollars and is worth $50.

But I've had a wonderful time.

Bye-bye, Antiques Roadshow.

I'm Mark Walberg.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time on Antiques Roadshow.

You've been waiting in line a while, huh?

Yeah.

Well, that's a pretty picture.

Tell me about it.

(inaudible chattering)