MARK WALBERG: This week, "Antiques Roadshow" visits San Diego, California.
This is absolutely one of the finest salesman samples I have ever seen.
Oh, my God.
Whoa, I almost took a tumble there.
I think we'll insure it before we drive home.
(laughs) Want to see more of San Diego's hidden treasures?
You won't want to miss this exciting hour of "Antiques Roadshow."
♪ ♪ (fireworks exploding) ♪ ♪ Welcome to "Antiques Roadshow."
Hi, I'm Mark Walberg, this week in San Diego, California.
San Diego calls itself "America's Finest City," and it's a reasonable argument.
Some fine places of interest: Balboa Park, Old Town, the Gaslamp Quarter, and miles of beautiful beaches.
But are San Diego's antiques and collectibles as good as it gets?
Let's take a closer look.
WOMAN: About 20 years ago, I went to a local swap meet and this painting caught my eye because it reminds me of an area where I used to go vacation up in Monterey.
It was stacked just haphazardly with a bunch of junk.
And so I rescued it for $10.
Do you know anything about the artist?
A few years ago I did go to the San Diego Museum of Art, which was having a show about California plein air painters, and I noticed a painting that looked very similar to this and the signature looked a little familiar.
So I ran home and it looked like the same signature.
So that's why I brought it today, I thought maybe there was a glimmer of hope.
It is a painting by Raymond Dabb Yelland, who was a well-known California artist.
Now, the painting that you saw at the museum, was it roughly the same composition as this?
It was very similar, but larger, and I believe it was on canvas.
I'm not sure.
On the back, there's an inscription that says "sketch."
Artists typically will do a sketch on a smaller scale for a larger painting.
So one of the most exciting things about this, to me, is that I think this is probably the sketch for that painting that you saw in the museum.
Wow.
He signed again on the reverse, gives the place-- Monterey Bay-- and it gives the date, 1896.
Raymond Yelland was born in England, came to the United States, studied in New York and then moved to the San Francisco area and he taught here.
He developed a type of painting, California coastal painting.
This is a classic down-the-center, A-1, wonderful example of his work.
Wow.
We nearly fainted when we saw it, actually.
Several of us looked at it and thought, "This is just beautiful."
Now, he died in 1900 at a rather young age.
He was only 52.
So it's one of his later pictures, but it's absolute, full-cry, high-style Yelland California painting.
Now, as you've observed, there's some damage to the edges.
On the other hand, it is just to the edges.
Even in this condition, I'd expect this to sell for about $15,000 at auction.
No!
No way.
Way.
Oh, my gosh.
This is one of the great finds I've seen on the Roadshow and it's a real treasure.
For $10, that's amazing.
You got it.
WOMAN: It was something that my father had acquired back in the early '70s from a woman, actually... she was late on her rent.
And, in trade, she says, "I will give you this instead."
And nobody knew the value of it or what it was.
And he brought it home and I saw it and my mother quickly put it away in the cabinet.
But I always said to her, one day I would love to have this.
And so when I got married, she quietly gave it to me.
And did you take it out when it was at your mother's house and look at it?
Oh, yeah, I would constantly go up to the china cabinet, open it up, stare at it for a while, and she'd look at me and say, "No, no-- no touching."
No touching?
Okay.
No touching.
Well, what you have is an ivory piece and it was made in northern France in a town called Dieppe.
It's on the north coast, it's a resort area.
It was a major port in France, and one of the things they imported was African ivory.
And they made these carvings starting in the early part of the Renaissance, and this continued up into the 19th century.
And your piece is probably from the 1870s or the 1880s.
Oh, wow, okay.
It's this wonderful Renaissance lady with this very elaborate costume.
And, as you know, when you open it up here below...
The best part.
Exactly.
You have these little scenes.
It's signed here-- Torqualo Tasso, 1544, and he was a very, very famous poet in Italy.
And he was born in 1544.
On the sides here, you see this standing figure of Beatrice and this standing figure here of Dante.
And Dante, of course, was the most famous Italian poet of the Middle Ages.
Right.
So I think this is paying homage to the tradition of Italian poetry.
And what would people use something like this for?
Dieppe was a big tourist area, Ah.
and they made these as tourist items.
It's in very good shape for ivory.
Ivory does respond to changes in temperature and humidity, and sometimes large cracks appear.
They're almost never signed.
In fact, there's a museum in Dieppe of these kinds of carving, and I think in the entire museum there are only one or two that are signed.
Okay.
In a shop, this would probably be about $3,000 or $4,000.
Wow.
Wow, really?
Yeah.
Wow, that's nice.
(laughs) Well, I had a very, very simplistic violin when I first started playing at about eight, age eight.
And as the years went by, my parents were beginning to think we should get a better violin.
And my teacher by then was a very knowledgeable man.
Mm-hmm.
And he spent about a year searching.
And he got hold of, of a number which I gathered were... Four or five or six that came in a collection that were imported into Chicago at that time.
And he picked one out that he thought was appropriate for us.
And this was in what year?
Uh, '38-- 1938.
So how long has it been since you played your violin?
Since about 1945 or '46.
I know very little except what is on this piece of paper.
And I didn't have it then.
I just knew that my teacher said it came from a collection that had been intact in England Mm-hmm.
Under the auspices of something-- a small museum or a private collector.
I'm not sure.
He thought it was appropriate for us.
Well, I'm looking at the invoice, the original invoice, and I'm seeing that you paid $200 for this violin.
Yes.
That your father paid $200.
Yes.
My sense is that $200 in 1938 was a significant amount of money.
It was.
But there was just one child.
I suppose that made it... (chuckles) made it a little different, because he didn't have five or six that needed instruments.
You probably noticed the label on the inside of your violin, which reads, "Ignatij Ber from Bernau in 1787."
That label is absolutely right, it's an original label.
Ignatij Ber was an interesting violin maker.
The city of Bernau is in Bavaria.
It's a small village, and there's not a lot of information about this maker.
Mm-hmm.
But the information that does exist allows me to understand that this violin is indeed original.
It's what the label says.
So he was known for using fruit wood for his scrolls, and this scroll is indeed made out of pear wood.
I see.
So that's an unusual wood to be used for scrolls.
Uh-huh.
But not unusual for this particular period in time.
I see.
The other thing that allows me to connect this violin to the original invoice is the fact that there's this number, 3851, which is inside the other F-hole.
We know that this violin is the same violin that's being described on the invoice.
So... At the time this violin was purchased for you, it was a significant purchase for your family, and it was a significant violin.
You have kept this violin in really beautiful condition, which I'm very pleased to see.
That's good.
Given that you haven't played it for 60 or 70 years, I think that this is quite remarkable that it's in this good condition.
Well, we did get it out once or twice.
And the bow, I think, is also interesting.
It has a brand on here, which says "Peccatte."
Now, Peccatte was an important maker from France in the mid-1800s.
His bows were very highly esteemed.
This is not an original Peccatte.
It's a German bow, and I can identify it as being from the workshop of Albert Nürnberger, one of the great German bow makers.
Hmm.
So, the violin... ...would have a value in the retail market today of $15,000.
Fifteen?
$15,000.
Well, that's come a long way, hasn't it?
Indeed.
Yeah.
And the bow has a value of around $2,000 in the retail market.
My goodness.
$2,000 to $2,500.
Well, thank you very much.
WOMAN: I was in college in New York City in like 1965, '66, somewhere right in there, and went home for Thanksgiving vacation.
My birthday usually falls on Thanksgiving vacation, and a very good friend of mine who was an antiques dealer in Baltimore called me up and said that he had a piece that he'd just gotten from an estate that he thought that I should have.
So I went and looked at it and fell in love with it instantly.
I asked him what the price was and he told me and I said, "Well, I can't afford that," just on my allowance, you know, in college.
And he said, "Well, go home and ask your mother to give it to you for your birthday."
So I did.
And she said, oh, that was way too much.
And I said, "Well, how about birthday and Christmas?"
So she gave it to me for my birthday and Christmas combined and I think it was a pretty good investment.
She paid $350.
I did have it appraised in 1982, and that appraisal was $20,000.
Okay.
$20,000, that was probably for insurance purposes I guess.
Yes.
From my understanding, it is the Qianlong period and it is very fine quality jade.
Well, first, this is a censer, covered vessel.
And it has these loose, sort of articulated rings on the handles, which is technically difficult to do.
The other type of carving here on the side is all in relief and it's a series of lotus vines.
And there's kind of stylized lotus vines.
And this is a butterfly forming the handle.
And, really interestingly, when we turn it around, we'll see that the lotus decoration, which is all around the side, emanates from several vines that are sprouting from underneath.
The other point is that the stone is this nice, even, white color.
This is all carved from one piece of stone.
If you look at the details of the carving, which are really quite beautiful, you'll notice that there's some little lines on the leaves.
What you find on works that were done in the 18th century is you usually don't see that kind of technique.
It's a little bit more finished in terms of the quality.
And you have some fluidity, but in the 18th century ones, it's really pretty extraordinary.
So my sense is that this certainly is in the style of the 18th-century works that you get in the Qianlong period, but it was done in the early part of the 20th century.
That's my sense.
Now, what's happened in the last few years is that there has been an influx of buyers from China.
Yes.
That has dramatically changed the market.
And what they're looking for are pieces that are of even white color, which this certainly has, but they're also looking for things that are in a traditional kind of style, 18th-century style, and when that falls into place, they're pretty enthusiastic about it.
So, I think that the figure that was given in the '80s was, you know, was pretty stiff at the time.
And if you wanted to sell this at auction today-- and I would rather err on the side of being a little bit more conservative-- but my sense is that it would be in the $50,000 to $80,000 range at auction, which is a pretty good price.
Well, it's still a very nice birthday present.
Oh, Lord, yes.
Don't you think?
And I have to say, I don't know many people that have put $300 down and ended up with something like this.
WOMAN: The ring was purchased at Waldhorn's in New Orleans in 1967.
APPRAISER: Okay.
We have a beautiful emerald.
We figure it's around two carats, maybe a little bit more, but this nice, nice color, not too badly included.
And then if we also just rotate it to the side, we can show everybody the Greek key, and then they set some diamonds on the side.
Exactly.
You paid for this Marcus and Company ring.
Back then, how much money?
Between $3,500 and $5,000.
I'm going to tell you, today, retail, this ring would probably be somewhere around $30,000 to maybe $35,000.
That's very nice.
That's a nice...
Yes.
I'm going to continue to wear it happily, and then I will pass it on down to my daughter, who adores the ring.
Oh, does she?
Yes.
(chuckles) WOMAN: My family is from northern Italy, and through the years some of them needed to work elsewhere, different economies, and some worked in Switzerland as military men.
And one man in particular was shipped to Africa, and he brought some beautiful pieces back.
And what would the year have been?
This was in the early 1900s.
This piece is late 19th century-- 1875 to 1900-- which really fits perfectly with the story that you have from the family.
This is from the Chokwe Complex, and the Chokwe Complex really spans three countries-- the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Angola.
We see that it's a female figure, and this is a staff.
And as a staff, it is a prestige object.
The individual that held this was a person of some authority.
Now, what we want to see is wear patterns that are appropriate for this particular object.
So if you look inside the grooves, there's no wear at all, but every single ridge here has kind of a shiny patina on it.
Again, the breasts, the arm-- this is superbly carved.
I want to also point out there's a wonderful metal bangle over here on the proper left arm.
The scarification, you do see these cheek marks.
Those really indicate a region and a tribal group, a sub-tribe of the Chokwe.
I really believe it's Luena, partially because of these marks in the cheek, partially because of the coiffure.
Now, a staff would be much longer.
When they wanted to take these home, they chopped them off.
I understand.
You're probably missing about that much off the bottom of this.
This is truly one of the finest African objects that we've had on this show.
Oh.
We're in a little bit of a tough market right now.
Chokwe pieces, Luena pieces are highly sought after.
People love these things.
The piece like this, as a conservative insurance value, would be $10,000 to $15,000.
Oh, really?
And, as the market improves, this is going to be worth more money.
You're going to take care of this piece now, aren't you?
Absolutely.
(laughs) I think we'll insure it before we drive home.
WOMAN: They were my father-in-law's.
And he had a ranch in Santa Barbara in the '30s and the '40s.
I think that's where they came from.
He moved to San Diego in the '50s and they hung in his house and he gave them to me in the '80s.
Well, let me tell you a little bit first about the artist.
His name is Edward Borein.
He was born in 1872 in a small town close to San Francisco.
And his dream early on in life was to be a cowboy.
He was also a prodigy as an artist and was self-taught, sort of unusual for his day.
He was just a prolific sketcher as a kid, and drew and drew and drew and had a real talent for it.
And around the turn of the century, the story goes, he sent a few drawings into a magazine and they were bought by the magazine as illustrations, so he thought to himself, after these years of being a cowboy, he thought, "Well, I can make money with my talent drawing pictures."
And that led him to a career in the arts.
He worked as an illustrator in the early 1900s, and in 1907, to better his career as an artist, he had moved to New York.
There he met other artists, took classes and became more popular as an artist, but never really fit in on the East Coast.
And by 1921, he had moved back full-time to California and to Santa Barbara, Okay, he was... and he lived there until his death in 1945.
And it was in that 20-some-odd period that he made most of his etchings.
And he made just over a hundred etchings, all of which are these very evocative Western scenes.
He basically drew what he saw.
As you see in this etching in the center here, it's a great Western scene.
It's signed in pencil "Edward Borein."
In that etching closest to you, you have a stage coach racing down the hill.
Mm-hmm.
And in this etching closest to me, you have a view of several cowboys outside the Cantina de las Palomas.
So they really have this great feel of the West in the '20s and the '30s.
The really great thing to me about Borein is, as a Western artist, somebody who ranks up there with Charles Russell and Frederic Remington, he was the only one who made etchings.
So that's wonderful to have, this body of etched work by such a prominent Western artist.
And in that, there lies some of the value of his prints, because you really can't get prints of these subjects by the other great Western artists.
So this one, in sort of perfect condition as I can see it in the frame, at auction, that's going to bring around $3,000 to $5,000.
Okay.
It's just perfect.
Okay.
This one closest to you, the stagecoach, is a lesser subject-- a smaller, not so Western, Not as interesting.
not as interesting.
With the staining, the foxing, it's going to be about a thousand dollars to $1,200 at auction.
Mmm-hmm.
This one closest to me is a wonderful, large, scarce print.
And, with the staining, is probably on order of about $2,000 to $2,500.
That being said, with these two here, you can have these cared for by a paper conservator and they can take the staining out of that one, remove the masking tape from the back on here and, believe it or not, wash the staining out of this one, too.
That generally runs around $150 to $200 per print for prints this size.
Cleaned up, that would be about a $1,500 to $2,500 print at auction.
And this would be about a $3,000 to $5,000 print at auction, Okay.
so your money is well spent in cleaning these up.
Yeah.
WOMAN: I got this from my mom.
She had purchased it at a little antiques shop in downtown Anaheim probably 20 years ago.
She brought it home and rolled it up and put it under her bed because she had no place to put it.
And when I went to see her, we dragged it out and she opened it up and showed it to me.
And I could see right away that it has some kind of historical significance to it.
Now, was your mom a collector?
My mother was sort of like a collector of anything impulsively that she found.
So she walks into the shop, sees this...
Liked it and took it.
Liked it, paid...?
I would say probably no more than a hundred dollars.
Now, at first glance, you might think she purchased a quilt.
Right.
But she didn't.
What she purchased was an early American bedcover.
A bedcover, okay.
And that's part of the reason that the squares are positioned the way they are.
So picture this lying on a bed draped over the sides where everything would now be very visible and in the right position.
And up there in the corner is "1830."
That's exactly the date we would want to see on a piece like this.
The background material is just something that she probably purchased at the dry goods store.
Oh, okay.
It's a piece of homespun.
And she used that as her canvas to portray, more than likely, family history.
Mmm.
It's the family story.
This piece clearly was made on the East Coast, more than likely Connecticut, Massachusetts area.
Right.
It's interesting that it's dated, but it's not signed.
Usually pieces that are this strong graphically and are this artful, you sign because the maker is so proud of her work.
Oh, sure.
But for whatever reason, it remains unsigned.
The outside is beautifully done in 20 squares, all depicting floral arrangements.
Mm-hmm.
The inside tells a wonderful story.
We can start on the bottom here with an early American eagle with the shield, the arrows and the olive branch.
Moving right up here to this wonderful folky lion.
This one right here, probably three family members.
We see a degree of affluence.
We see a military man, we see probably a merchant.
When we move up to one of the houses-- and there are four houses-- we see this substantial brick home with three chimneys.
So she's attempting to communicate in a very folky way, in a very naive way, the fact that the family homestead was quite substantial.
It's a wonderful work of art.
Now, in terms of value, retail, I would say $22,000 to $25,000.
Oh, my God.
Whoa, I almost took a tumble there.
Wow, that's, like, more than twice what my best hopes were.
And the textile marketplace has actually come down quite a bit Uh-huh.
in the last couple of years because of the economy.
But pieces like this are what collectors still covet and will pay a very strong price for.
Wow, I'm just really still blown away.
(both laughing) I'm going to float home.
When it comes to collecting aviation materials, the sky is truly the limit.
Airplanes, propellers, photos and more can be found at the Allen Airways Flying Museum, the private collection of Bill and Claudia Allen.
(engine sputtering to life) How many aviation posters do you think you own?
BILL ALLEN: I've been doing it for 50 years, so our guess is over 500, dating back to 1876.
There are things that are unknown that are out there, so that's what's so exciting; it's the hunt.
WALBERG: "Roadshow" expert Nicholas Lowry joined us to look at some of the earliest known posters of mechanical flight.
LOWRY: Mark, with the beginning of heavier-than-air flight in the early 1900s, people were able to witness something they'd only dreamed about.
And people around the world were flocking to aviation events to see these early aviators take to the sky.
And since it was such an event, that had to be advertised.
And we have some examples of incredible posters here.
These are beautiful, beautiful posters, but more than just beautiful images, they're also very important historical documents because they chronicle this whole beginning of the rage of flying.
And here we have a poster for a two-week air meet in 1910 in Nice.
This really is one of the greatest of all the early aviation posters.
The image is such a fantastically poetic, allegorical image of an airman throwing roses out over the Côte d'Azur from his open cockpit.
By placing the viewer higher up than the actual airplane and looking down on the entire scene, it really, I think, not only captures people's imagine, but also sparks their imagination.
And currently, I would say an auction estimate on this poster would be between $12,000 and $18,000.
Tell me about this poster advertising another French air show.
Up until now, traditional scholarship had said the first air meet in the world was in the French town of Rheims in August of 1909.
But when we researched this poster, we found out that this air meet in Vichy was scheduled for June of 1909, making it the first major air show in the world.
Now, you actually see that the poster doesn't have a date printed on it.
And that's because the organizers, as they were trying to get ready for the June event, were having so much trouble, they realized it might not actually take place in June.
And, in fact, it had to be postponed until July of that year.
This image of the beautiful woman seen from behind in an elegant dress and an elegant hat, with very detailed visible planes in the sky, really became a genre that other artists used to depict and to advertise future aviation shows throughout France.
They probably printed several hundred, if not as many as a thousand of these, yet I only know of two existing copies of this poster.
WALBERG: Oh, my.
It's only come up for auction once, and based on that estimate alone, I would estimate this poster between $12,000 and $18,000.
Wow.
Tell me about this poster that's even rarer than the one from Vichy.
Mark, to the best of our knowledge, this is the only known copy of this poster to exist.
The Boston 1915 Exposition was a progressive plan intended to transform and modernize the city of Boston.
It's advertising an exhibition in Copley Square in 1909 that was to begin fundraising for this great 1915 World's Fair.
And in this poster, it's not advertising an air meet or an aviation show, but the promoters were using the most up-to-date technology to show how Boston was a progressive and leading city, and so they very precisely illustrated one of the earliest American-produced aircraft.
It just says that this city is really all about the future.
As beautiful and as optimistic as the poster is, it apparently wasn't that successful, because the Boston 1915 Exposition never occurred.
Now, how do you appraise something that's one of a kind?
Luckily, in this case, this poster has appeared at auction the one time it came up.
And based on that auction result, I would estimate its value to be between $15,000 and $20,000.
Well, Nico, these posters are beautiful and as intriguing as they are valuable.
Thanks for sharing them.
It's been a great pleasure.
MAN: Well, it belonged to my great-grandfather.
He was a doctor.
I know it was a salesman's sample that he kept in his office.
When my parents passed away, I inherited it.
My mother sent pictures of it to an appraiser in San Francisco in, I believe, '79 or '80, and they sent her back a note saying it was worth around $1,500.
Well, it is a salesman's sample.
A lot of people wonder what's the difference between a salesman's sample and a miniature, and the keynote of a really good salesman's sample is that it has functionality, because the whole object of the piece was to demonstrate the item.
The salesman could carry this around from town to town and show the doctor exactly what he had.
And of all the salesman samples I've dealt with over the years, this is probably the most amazingly functional item I've ever seen.
It's a doctor's examination table, and it's a multifunction examination table.
The patient could lie down here and be examined, with a pillow.
If he had to have his height adjusted, this could be adjusted here.
If he had to have his legs examined, the legs would come up like this.
They could even do one leg at a time.
One or the other.
It's absolutely astounding.
This is a little accessory that would go on the side if he had to examine an arm... That's what I thought, for the arm.
Or maybe draw blood.
And it could of course go on either side.
The table would rock to one side.
I'm not exactly sure what that was for, but it could go either way.
This whole leg assembly comes off.
Oh, I didn't know that.
So that another feature of the table could be in place where it becomes a gynecological examination table with the installation of these stirrups.
Other features... this bends down.
So it has all this incredible functionality.
Another thing that elevates a salesman's sample to the next level is if we can identify the maker.
Now, right here on this upholstered foot rest, we see "Allison."
I did some research.
There was a company called "W.D.
Allison" in 1905, 1900 in Indianapolis that made all manner of medical equipment.
Uh-huh.
Nothing they made in that period that I've seen online was as amazing as this table.
But I think this table was made pre-1900, amazing detail, amazing condition, complete in all respects.
Uh-huh.
And I would estimate it in an auction at $15,000 to $18,000.
You're kidding.
I am not kidding.
Wow.
This is absolutely one of the finest salesman samples I have ever seen.
WOMAN: It belonged to my grandfather.
It was in his "man's room."
He died in 1918, and it's gone then to my grandmother and then to my uncle, and then nobody wanted it, so I got it.
And it's been in closets and with my daughter and... And so the current family attitude towards this picture is...
It's not one of our favorite paintings.
My sons both want to sell it when I'm dead.
The artist here is Philip Russell Goodwin.
Yep.
He was born in Connecticut in 1882.
He later had a studio in New York, even though he was painting Western subjects.
And he also studied at RISD, amongst other places.
He was a very precocious artist.
By age 11, he had already sold his first work to "Collier's" magazine.
At 11!
So he kind of began his career as an illustrator.
He did work for calendars; he did advertising work; he illustrated some books, including "Call of the Wild" by Jack London and also one for Theodore Roosevelt called "African Game Trails."
He was really always into these kind of hunting and fishing subjects, and he also did pictures about life of cowboys on the ranch.
So very much a Western orientation.
Now, here we have kind of a dramatic moment.
It's called "Landing a Beauty."
And we see two sportsmen about to net this fish.
Right.
And there are these wonderful reflections in the water and this dramatic yellow sky, which is reflected in the water below.
I would think it's probably around the turn of the century.
He didn't live a long life; he died in 1935.
And he really had not had a lot of success in his lifetime.
He was one of these artists who got discovered more after his death.
Do you have any idea of what it might be worth?
I did look up what another painting had sold for, but it was a very pretty painting, as opposed to this one, and it was smaller than this, but it was an oil.
And that was the only thing I had to compare it with, and that was $140,000, and I do know that prints sell for $1,500 on the internet.
And that's all that I know.
There are a few things that I have concern about.
This paint is going on top of the treetops here.
I'm not sure why.
When we look down here by the signature... Yeah.
There's this difference in the background color, and I think that can be explained by the fact that it may have been cleaned at one point and they decided not to clean around the signature so that it wouldn't become any lighter or... Well, I believe they did clean it when I repaired it.
It had a little tear in it, so I had that repaired and they did clean it, and I don't know whether they did that or not, because I've really never taken as close a look at the painting as I have today.
Right.
And there is this line going across here, which is from the stretcher bar.
But that can easily be remedied.
But because of these few little condition things going on, I would think that in a retail gallery, it might sell for about $125,000.
Oh, my God.
I won't have to live with my kids for that much...
So... yeah.
A retail gallery.
(laughing): So where is a retail gallery?
Really?
That is just something.
Oh, my God, it's so amazing... Yeah.
Since no one likes it.
MAN: My mother got that guitar, I think, in the late '30s.
She had just become a first-grade schoolteacher and probably spent more than she could afford.
I think back then flamenco guitar, or Spanish guitar, was popular, so I only assume she was using that either in her class or trying to learn how to play it.
Tell me about this.
Well, that was the original price tag that was in the guitar case with that, and it's purchased here locally from Johnson Hoffman store.
The original price was $125.
In what, about 1930?
I think about 1938, would be my guess.
Well, when you brought the guitar to me, I saw the case, I said, "That's a 1930s case."
So that's what I expected to see when I opened the case.
But what I saw was a much older guitar.
Ah.
I'm going to start at the back of the guitar.
Okay.
The body of the guitar is Brazilian rosewood.
It's made by the C.F.
Martin Guitar Company, which was started in 1833.
I've dated this guitar at around mid-1890s.
That old?
So it's much older than it looks, incredibly well preserved.
Beautiful original finish on the back.
There's no serial number on the block inside this guitar like most modern guitars, but there's ways to figure out its age.
On the inside of the guitar, it's marked "C.F.
Martin & Company, New York."
That was only done between 1867 and 1898.
The other part of the detective work on this guitar to figure out its age was this finish.
It's an amber finish.
It's not a clear, natural shellac finish, which you would expect to see.
Huh.
They did that in the 1890s.
Plus, the mechanical tuners on this guitar, instead of ivory tuners, would put it right in that 1890s range.
The model of the guitar is a single 0-28.
The features of the single 0-28 are a very beautiful, fine herringbone trim around the outside, Brazilian rosewood back and sides, spruce top, beautiful... it's a pyramid bridge.
It's in excellent condition.
It's over 110 years old, approximately.
If you want to go down to the music store and take a lesson tomorrow, you could put a set of strings on it and go.
It's in fabulous condition.
It shows extremely minimal play wear.
They didn't put pick guards on these guitars until about 1930.
Now, would this be considered a flamenco guitar, classical guitar, Spanish guitar?
It would be considered a Spanish guitar.
Martin didn't really make steel string guitars until the late 1920s.
It does have an X bracing system in it, so you could probably put very extra light steel strings on it, but this has a fabulous sound and playability with nylon strings.
Did you have any idea of the value of this guitar?
In the late '70s, I took an extension class in classical guitar here at the university, and on the first day of class, the teacher said he could give me $800 to $1,000 tops for it.
I know you don't want to sell the guitar; you said it's a family heirloom and I can see why.
Correct.
In this market, I would put the insurance value of this guitar between $6,000 and $7,000.
Excellent, excellent, thank you.
It's a fabulous thing.
MAN: My dad was from a farming community in Peebles, Ohio.
My relatives moved there in the late 1700s.
He hated the farming industry, he hated being a hick, and he went to the one gentleman in town that taught him how to be more refined.
He came out to San Diego in 1931 or 1932, when he was 16 or 17, liked the city, went back, told his brothers and his parents he was moving there, went to the gentleman that had polished him a little bit, and the gentleman either gave him this set or he purchased it.
We don't know exactly.
I remember as a child seeing it in the '50s.
My father passed away in '69, my mother passed away last year, and I found it in my mother's belongings.
Well, it's interesting that you say he wanted to be a more refined gentleman, because what we have here is definitely refined.
This is a gentleman's Edwardian cufflink and stud set from Cartier.
These were made in the early part of the 1900s.
We know that as the Edwardian era.
It's about 1915.
What we have is a 14-karat gold cufflink with carved rock crystal.
In the center are platinum settings with rose-cut diamonds; a sugarloaf, which means a rounded top, sapphire.
This is a cufflink.
This is for the shirt stud.
This is for the gentleman's vest button.
These little hooks secured these in place.
The cufflink, of course, went through the cuff button, but the pièce de résistance is the fact that you have the original box.
The box is marked "Cartier, Paris, London and New York."
On closer examination, the 18-karat gold cufflinks have French hallmarks on them, so we know they were made in France and brought to America.
Now, this is the top of the line.
Really?
Did he ever wear the set?
Yeah, he wore it all the time in the '40s.
He liked to dress up.
He had tuxedos, and he would wear it.
In a luxurious retail setting, this set would bring $12,000 to $15,000.
(laughing): Oh... oh!
At an auction, it could go even more.
Really?
Yes.
Amazing.
This is absolutely fabulous.
My dad would be really, really pleased.
(laughs) WOMAN: 37 years ago, my husband and I moved from San Diego to Riverside, and we'd been in our new home for about... three... two, three months, and my next-door neighbor came over and said, "Oh, you like antiques.
"Well, the little old lady across the street is moving and she's selling some things."
So I went over there, and she showed me some things that were for sale, and of course I made a beeline for this.
What did you pay?
50 dollars.
This is just a great piece of American folk art.
If you look at the front, it's just a cornucopia of Americana.
Here we have "law," "liberty" and "union" and down here "Washington," wonderfully carved with intertwined vines, and that great date, 1776.
And if we spin around... if we spin around to the other side...
Yes.
This is what's really great.
"This is my first."
"Here my success."
"Done with the knife seen on the top of the box."
And then you go to the top of the box and right there... Treasure hunt.
Treasure hunt, right?
Yes.
And I couldn't believe that when I first saw it.
Here is the knife.
And that's metal, right?
Yes.
That thing must be pretty dull by now after he carved this whole box with that knife.
And here is a picture of S.D.
Ramsdell.
Because this is such a great piece of Americana and great original paint, great surface, it would be worth, at auction, in the range of $3,000 to $4,000.
Wow!
Not bad for $50, right?
That's great; not bad for $50.
That's wonderful.
WOMAN: This is a piece that I've had in my possession since early 1960s.
It's something that I bought in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which is where I grew up.
During the 1960s, many mid-century vacation homes and beach homes were being torn down to be replaced by new buildings, and many of their owners had been people who had traveled all over Europe and plundered Europe as they made their world tours and filled their lovely mansions with beautiful things.
So did you get this out of one of those houses?
I got it from someone who bought it from one of those houses.
Okay.
She was actually a dealer.
My husband and I were newly married.
We had very little money at the time, and I think we could not have paid more than $200, $250 for it, probably more like $150.
Okay.
Well, what we have here is a Doulton vase.
It is English, made at the Burslem factory, beautifully done.
It is very, very typical of the late Victorian era.
It's signed here by George White, an artist with the Doulton Burslem factory.
What we see here is the Doulton Burslem emblem.
Yes.
Okay, this mark is going to tell us that this piece was made between 1891 and 1902.
Now, we know George White was working at the factory during that time period, and we know that he cared so much about it that he then signed it and he also probably titled it.
So more than likely the title of this piece is indeed "Autumn."
And we can also see that it is decorated all the way around.
This epitomizes the Victorian style, which is not terribly valuable today, not as collectible as it used to be.
There's an awful lot of Doulton stuff that's out there on the market right now.
In this particular case, this does represent what is probably the top five percent of Doulton.
As such, that market has not been hit as hard with regard to pricing.
If you sold it at auction today, my guess is you're looking somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000.
So...
I see... oh.
It's a very nice piece.
It's a piece that has been on our coffee table even as my children were growing up, and they found it as a wonderful receptacle for their Cheerios when they were little.
Well, I assume they're not doing that anymore.
No.
(chuckling) I brought a portion of my grandfather's collection.
His name is Jack Kirby, and he was a pretty well known comic book artist.
I would say so.
I would say he's definitely on the Mount Rushmore of comic book artists.
Jack Kirby, legendary, the co-creator of Captain America, Fantastic Four, of The Hulk, Thor, you name it, it goes on and on and on.
What we have here basically is kind of a timeline of his work from the early 1930s through the 1970s, so it's a really nice retrospective of his career.
And these were very special pieces.
These were the pieces he kept in his own collection.
Yes.
We start out here with this original page from "Boy Commandos," from the early 1940s.
And why did he keep this page?
Primarily it was one of the only pieces, I've been told, that he kept, and mainly because he drew himself and his partner in the panel.
And here he is, right here.
Yep.
And his partner, Joe Simon, right here.
Yeah.
They co-created Captain America, one of the most popular comics of all time, and then here we have a specialty piece which has a lot of his characters from the Marvel comics from the Silver Age and The Fantastic Four.
We have Hulk, Dr. Doom, just wonderful piece.
One of the most interesting things you brought in is this piece right here.
Tell us a little bit about that.
It shows a little bit of our family history.
Before he was Jack Kirby, his original name is actually Jacob Kurtzberg, and so in some of the earlier drawings, he still wrote his original last name.
Right, and this is probably from the early 1930s, mid-1930s?
Yeah, I'm not sure.
He was probably just a teenager then.
He wasn't much older than that.
And then we have an interesting piece here.
This is an ephemeral piece.
This was like a sell sheet that went to the various stores, candy stores, that basically advertised the new Boy Commandos comic book.
Again, these are things you just don't see very often.
I would insure the collection we see here for no less than $15,000.
It was really exciting to see it.
Great.
Well, thank you very much for having me.
WOMAN: They came from an aunt and uncle in Columbia, South Carolina, and they acquired them at an auction in Highland, North Carolina.
They went to the auction quite regularly because they had a mountain home up there.
The auctioneer knew them, and he asked them if they would bid on it, and that's how they got this set of glass.
There are 72 pieces.
And you don't know what they paid?
No, I have no idea.
What we have here is Bohemian, or Austrian, glass called Moser, but we refer to it as Moser style.
Unless it's signed, we always use "Moser style."
Moser was the glass of kings and the king of glass.
They supplied glass to the Austrian courts.
They started in about 1857, mid-19th century.
I would place an age on these of about turn-of-the-century.
You have a finger bowl, an underplate, a Rhine wine, a red wine, a champagne and a liqueur.
The gold on here is very, very thick.
It's 24-karat gold leafing, and this is a very high luster gold leaf.
Every piece is pristine.
Do you use them?
No.
Never.
Never.
I wonder if anybody ever did use them.
I don't think anybody used these.
They're just absolutely perfect.
A retail price, you have $1,200 to $1,500 just in these few pieces.
Your set of 72 pieces would be in the range of $15,000 to $18,000.
Oh, wow.
MAN: These books were owned by our great-grandmother.
As far as going back beyond that, we're not sure how long they've been in the family.
Well, these are two really quite amazing books.
They're a two-part set of botanical illustrations.
The title is "Hortus Eystettensis," which is just a somewhat convoluted Latin name which means "The Garden of Eichstätt."
In the early 17th century, the bishop of Eichstätt wanted to create a garden that had a comprehensive view of all of the flowering plants around the world.
And, in fact, they managed to have live examples from America, from the Ottoman Empire and from Asia Minor.
And he hired a pharmacist from Nuremberg named Basilius Besler to create these volumes to record his holdings in his comprehensive garden.
Besler then went ahead and hired a series of engravers to produce these absolutely phenomenally large size plates of plants and flowering objects from his garden.
The books were ordered in the process of the seasons, as various flowers came to bloom and the engravers were able to capture the works in their various stages.
There were botanical books of some note prior to Besler's production of this book, but most of those were scientific works.
Besler's great discovery, or production, was to try to fill the entire plates with examples from the garden, and they are now highly, highly prized for their aesthetic qualities rather than, necessarily, for their scientific qualities.
Okay.
The books were an absolutely monumental task to produce.
It took Besler and about ten engravers, we believe, almost 16 years to produce the entire series.
Wow.
There were over a thousand plants illustrated in the books, of 600 different species, and there are 367 plates throughout the two volumes produced in 1613, which, of course, is the age of Galileo and Shakespeare.
So it really changed the nature of botanical illustration.
There were only 300 copies of this uncolored version produced.
There are a handful of examples that did have hand-colored illustrations by craftsmen that were produced for noblemen and others around the country.
But nevertheless, 300 original copies.
Most of them ended up in institutions.
We have a couple of plates with some tears that have been repaired, but they haven't been trimmed, as sometimes happens, and they have very little spotting or discoloration, which makes them very, very rare.
Now, in many cases, you see the individual prints from volumes that might have been defective or broken up over the centuries, and those can sell for anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 on an individual basis.
It's very rare to have complete copies like this that have been undisturbed and in essentially the original condition.
Because they are so important, a set like this, if it were to be offered at an auction today, would probably have a value of $250,000 to $350,000.
Wow.
That is amazing.
It is actually possibly the most valuable book we've seen on the "Roadshow."
I really appreciate your bringing it in.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
You're watching "Antiques Roadshow" WALBERG: And now, it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
I brought in Bubbe's bowl, the candy dish we thought that came from the shtetl in Russia.
Instead it came from a vendor probably on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and it's worth $25.
This is a Tiki.
I call him Charlie.
But I brought him down here, hoping that it was, like, something valuable, and I found out that it's probably made in Indonesia for the tourist trade.
This is my great-grandpa's gauze that he got in the 1920s, and it was 50 cents, and now it's worth $25.
And they said it wasn't even moldy.
Yeah, thanks, Grandpa.
My Dixie Cups, "Empire Strikes Back," left over from my eighth birthday party, worth 50 bucks.
Pretty cool.
I brought this all the way from Northern Ireland just to find out they don't know what it is either.
I brought what I thought was an original DeGrazia, but it's not.
It's worth $50 to $75, but, boy, we had fun.
We did.
Thanks, PBS.
Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.
I did not come here intending to get my ring evaluated, and then I realized I was short an item, so I had this sapphire and diamond ring evaluated that I paid a hundred dollars for, and the appraiser said it was worth $1,500 to $2,000!
I was just, like, "You gotta be kidding me."
And he said, "No, really, $1,500 to $2,000."
So it was well worth the drive from Arizona.
Bye.
I'm Mark Walberg, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time on "Antiques Roadshow."
Hi, Sean.
How are you?
How's your day going?
Great, I couldn't be happier.
