GUEST: It was my father's.
And he died and he had six of these paintings.
And my stepmother gave one to each of his children.
APPRAISER: He had had them for how long, do you know, or...
GUEST: Oh, for as long as I remember.
Probably late '50s, early '60s.
APPRAISER: Yeah, do you know anything about who the artist is or anything, have you...
GUEST: I know his name is Cahoon.
APPRAISER: Okay.
Ralph Cahoon was a Cape Cod artist and known for these whimsical, nautical, 19th-century-inspired motifs, primarily with mermaids and sailors.
Some of them had hot air balloons.
He was born in 1910.
He died in 1982.
This is a mid-20th-century work.
This is a, uh, oil on masonite.
He lived on the Cape, uh, in Cotuit, I think, most of the time.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And after his death, his prices and, uh, recognition started to gain quite nicely.
This is basically the original frame.
I'm sure Ralph put it in this frame.
It's a Victorian frame, very typical of his work.
Nice, bright picture here.
We have a lot of the bells and whistles.
We have 13 mermaids; we have a sailing ship with sailors; and then we have an American flag.
And we're either in the, it looks like the Antarctic, but it could have been in the North Pole.
This is a nice, cool picture.
I was very excited when I saw it.
I lived on the Cape for a number of years and knew a lot of friends of his and heard a lot of stories about him over the years.
Sounded like a wonderful guy.
GUEST: Sense of humor.
APPRAISER: Oh, yeah.
GUEST: (chuckles) APPRAISER: Wonderful, folky, whimsical painting.
And I think a good auction estimate would be $30,000 to $50,000.
GUEST: Great.
Good price.
APPRAISER: (chuckles)