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Antiques Roadshow - Season 30 (US) - Episode 01: Red Butte Garden & Arboretum, Hour 1
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00:04Antiques Roadshow is finding flowers and vintage finds in full bloom at Red Butte
00:10Garden in Salt Lake City. I think my dad hosed it off in the sink to get some of
00:15the dust off once, so I'll tell him not to do that again.
00:35Roadshow has landed at Red Butte Garden in Arboretum, where the diversity of plant life is astounding.
00:42Part of the University of Utah, the garden has been open to the public and growing in
00:46every way since 1985. This interface of urban and wild land includes 21 acres of managed landscape
00:55with about 75 acres of natural area. Roadshow cameras are ready to record as the lines of eager
01:03treasure seekers weave around the flower beds, and our experts inspect every object brought to this
01:09gorgeous garden. Which ones were picked for you to see? Take a look!
01:21I brought in an Egyptian Revival coffee pot. We're not really quite sure where it's from
01:27or when it's from, so we're excited to get it appraised.
01:34I brought a platter of some kind. It was in my grandpa's house for as long as I can remember.
01:41I mean, we don't know really that much about it.
01:44When I first saw this, you brought it to the table and you peeled back the packaging and my
01:50heart kind of skipped a beat just a little bit because I knew instantly what it was and where it
01:57was from. And it's just such a beautiful example. This is a Viennese silver enamel and rock crystal
02:06presentational centerpiece or charger dating from around about 1880. And we attribute it to the
02:13very, very successful maker called Hermann Boehm. And he was most well known for this Renaissance
02:21revival, which is what we're looking at here. When my colleagues and I looked at it, the first thing
02:27that we were really taken by is that at first glance, the panels appear to be glass. But in fact,
02:36they're not. Oh, they're made of rock crystal. Oh, wow. In fact, it's a variation of quartz.
02:42And in one of these panels, you can just see one of the internal fractures that helps us identify
02:48that it is rock crystal. Wow. It's meticulously carved. It's got this beautiful silver and enamel
02:55decoration throughout with putti, cherubs, winged figures, sata masks, you name it. It's all there.
03:05And then centered by these beautiful maidens within cornucopias. It's just really fabulous.
03:11One of my favorite things about this is the way it's made. Each individual bolt here represents one
03:18of the pieces that's been applied to the front. Okay. That's a real reflection of the craftsmanship.
03:23Surrounding each panel of rock crystal, you have this little decorative framework as well. And perhaps
03:31one of my favorites and the most unseen are the feet. These beautiful hairy paw or lion paw feet
03:39with enamel decoration. It's also incredibly big. Yes. It's a really large example. This is nearly 22
03:48inches in diameter. Have you ever had it appraised? No. Nope. It's just been sitting gathering dust.
03:57So I'm glad you said gathering dust. It's dusty. It could do with just a little bit of love.
04:03I think my dad hosed it off in the sink to get some of the dust off once. So I'll
04:09tell him not to do that again.
04:11With a little bit of love and a little bit of cleaning, I think if I were to see this
04:15come up
04:16at auction, I would feel very comfortable with an auction estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.
04:22Oh my gosh. Wow. We had no idea. That's incredible. We've always loved it. I always loved the little
04:35jewels as a, as a kid. I always thought it was beautiful, but wow. That's amazing.
04:47Wow.
04:50I'd recommend an insurance value of $60,000. Wow. Okay. So no more hosing it off.
05:01My husband has lugged it around all day today, so I'm glad it was worth, worth the effort.
05:09We got it at an estate sale around here. Yeah. And we just loved it. And we always need it
05:15somewhere we can see it because we actually just love it. You can't really tell what the signature
05:20says, but the frame is worth about the same price as the painting. So it's good.
05:30I actually don't know a ton about it. That's actually why I wanted to bring it.
05:35My grandmother was an avid antique collector and she was from England. So she actually bought this
05:43in England. And then when she moved to America, she brought it over with her.
05:47It's always been referred to in my family as the monk's bench.
05:52I brought you Pennsylvania German birth certificates. They've been in our family forever.
05:57This one is my great, great grandfather. The one on the other side is my great,
06:02great grandmother. And then this is my great, great, great grandmother. This is her son.
06:07Well, you have brought three wonderful examples of Pennsylvania fractures. There was a huge immigration
06:14into Pennsylvania in the 18th and the 19th centuries. And one of the wonderful traditions that was brought
06:21to America was the tradition of making fractures. And the two large ones are by a very well-known
06:29artist whose name is down here at the bottom, Martin Brushnell. And he worked throughout Pennsylvania
06:36in Lehigh County, Berks County, making these birth and baptismal records. The one that's next to you,
06:43we have the birth certificate of Gideon Barner, who was born 1810, baptized 1811. This would have been
06:53probably created in 1811. This factor commemorates the birth of Hannah Bear. She was born in 1813,
07:00baptized in 1814. So we know that because it also says Lehigh County, Lehigh County wasn't incorporated
07:08until 1812. So we know that it was actually produced 1812 or later. Martin Brushnell was a very prolific
07:16artist. We see a lot of wonderful fractures by him. And this is classic Brushnell. They're very, almost
07:23really primitive, very naive looking. And that's what makes them great folk art. Now, the one up at the top,
07:30that is by a quite well-known artist that at the moment does not have a real name. Some people
07:39think
07:39it might be Henry Wetzel, but they call him the dotted one artist. And that's because of the exclamation
07:47mark after the title. And it's classic with this asymmetrical flower and this ground patch and these
07:54abstract shapes along the border. This factor is for Elizabeth Old, born in 1774. She was baptized in
08:041774. But because we have Lehigh County mentioned there, that's Lehigh County spelled the German way,
08:12we know that this couldn't have been done before 1812. So decades after she was born, they produced this
08:20fracture, which was quite common in Pennsylvania. And even though that's smaller, that's really a more
08:28rare fracture. So these are all hand painted, they're not printed, and they're made of ink and
08:36watercolor. It wasn't until the 1820s and 1830s that they started making them using a printing press to
08:43make part of them. They've suffered a bit condition-wise. So that does affect value. They are bright
08:50the colors are bright. That's a wonderful thing. But the condition does affect their value. I know that
08:57you're probably never going to sell though, right? No, I have two children. We're going to hand them down.
09:01I'd put an insurance value on each of these two, the brushinals, of $3,000. Okay.
09:08$3,000 each. And on the dotted one, I'd put an insurance value of $4,000. Okay. Thank you.
09:24This water conservation garden where I'm standing right now, I would consider this our flagship
09:29garden. It's a place where people can come and learn about responsible gardening practices in an
09:37arid, high mountain desert. An arid garden can be lush and colorful, and it is. And so we want to
09:44show
09:44people, you don't just have to have rocks and cactus. The other thing is this is essentially
09:49a three-acre stormwater management system. So we try to collect and capture any rain we can get,
09:56because we don't get much. And we want to make sure it absorbs into the ground. So every one of
10:01these gardens is built into a basin. And as one fills, it goes into the next one, into the next
10:06one,
10:07and ultimately feeds our oak groves down at the bottom of the hill as it transitions its way down.
10:14It's a combination of both native plants and plants that are really well adapted to the region.
10:23I brought a spearhead. I found it on my folks' property out of Mandan, North Dakota in about 1947.
10:30How old were you when you found it? Oh, you'd ask that.
10:34Oh, I must have been about, good God. I think I was seven or eight.
10:42Do you have any idea who made it, time period? No. No guesses? No guess. Well, I know it's Flint,
10:50or I think it's Flint. Okay. And I don't know which tribe it was, made it. So this predates
10:57tribal affiliations of any kind. So we're going to go pre-contact period here. Okay.
11:03So we're going to go to about 8000 BC. What?
11:09So we're going to date this to the archaic to woodland period. 8000 BC at the earliest to about
11:161200 AD. At this point in the pre-contact time, archaeologists are grouping indigenous people by
11:25technology. So the archaic period, we're just coming out of the ice age. The continents warming,
11:31the game that they're hunting is smaller. So they're readjusting to that kind of life. And then
11:37when you get into the woodland period, you get the introduction of pottery and the introduction of
11:42agriculture. So when we're dating points of any kind, we're looking at the form. We're looking at
11:48how this is made, the shape, the shape of the base. But because this doesn't fall into a specific type,
11:55we're giving it a broader range. So the other really fun thing about this is it's a very specific
12:02Flint to North Dakota. It's called Knife River Flint. It's only found in a small area along the Knife
12:08River in Western North Dakota. I didn't know there was a Knife River.
12:14And the really cool thing about this, if you haven't done this, shown it to the light,
12:20it's translucent. Really?
12:23Mm-hmm. So Knife River Flint is very highly collectible because of the translucency. And
12:30it was highly prized by indigenous cultures. Do you have any idea on the value?
12:35No, haven't it come close if I can't come close? Time-wise. I have no idea.
12:43So conservatively, if this were to come up to auction, I would expect it to bring in the $2,000
12:48to $4,000 range. Hmm. Hmm. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Thank you.
13:01I brought in some skis that belongs to my grandfather. We don't really know much else
13:09about them. It's that they're from probably around the 30s, maybe.
13:18This is a 1968 Fender Telecaster base. The original owner had passed away. His wife was
13:25selling off his gear. So I picked it up from her, met her in a music store. I paid about
13:30$22.
13:31I'm very lucky and fortunate to have it.
13:37This painting was a painting that my grandfather was given.
13:41He was given by Maynard Dixon himself. Maynard Dixon had a studio and lived in Mount Carmel,
13:48Utah, part of the year, and then I understand in Tucson, I believe.
13:52Mount Carmel, Utah would be right here and up the road from this scene. So this is looking east from
14:00Mount Carmel where his studio would have been. Probably three hours, three and a half hours south
14:05of here. It's on the east side of Zion National Park. He had gotten himself caught and stuck in a
14:12bog of
14:13some kind of muddy spot in a country road. And my grandfather just happened to be out there. He had
14:19a small farm there and was able to pull Maynard Dixon and all of his stuff out of this muddy
14:26bog.
14:27And a few days later, Maynard showed up on his doorstep and gave them this painting.
14:33Wow. So were they friends? Did they know each other before this encounter?
14:37What I understand from what my father said is everybody knew who Maynard Dixon was. He was the
14:42odd man that everybody knew was kind of famous, but they didn't know exactly why, who lived down there.
14:48My father passed away in 1991, and so I've had it since then.
14:52It's a wonderful painting, and it's a better story. Maynard Dixon was born in California in 1875,
15:01had kind of a journeyman life, lived in San Francisco, left San Francisco after the 1906
15:07earthquake, destroyed a lot of his earlier work. He started off as an illustrator, as a lot of these
15:13artists did. He was pretty much self-taught. He did go to art school in San Francisco, but he only
15:19was there for about three months and then stopped. He traveled around painting in different parts
15:25of California. He eventually discovered Arizona and the West and fell in love with the Southwest,
15:31with Native American culture. He did paintings of Native Americans. In 1939, he moved to this area
15:38of Utah with his wife, and they also had a place in Tucson, which you mentioned. The climate was drier
15:46there, and he had some health issues. This is an oil on board. It's 12 by 16 inches, which is
15:53kind of a
15:53standard size. Artists would buy these artist boards that they could carry with them. It's a wonderful
16:00example of his later style. He died in 1946. He inscribed it on the back as well. Well, it has
16:09his
16:09name and address. I believe this is the original frame. About 25 years ago or 30, I did take it
16:16into
16:16the curator of the BYU Art Museum, and they took a photo of it. They wanted to catalog it. They
16:24told
16:24me at the time that it should be worth from $10,000 to $15,000. The insurance value for this
16:32painting
16:32would be $50,000. Oh, my gosh. Well, I hope we never have to collect on that insurance policy, but
16:41I like it because of the history. My father was really attached to this painting, but I'm blown away.
16:52Dixon's auction record is over $2 million. Wow. Oh, my.
16:59Okay. I got this carpet from my mother. Okay. And it was part of her grandmother's dowry.
17:07Okay. She had it for about 40 years. Well, I'll fill in some of the blanks for you. Okay.
17:13The rug is in the Ushak style. Okay. Ushak rugs were decorative carpets woven in Turkey. Okay.
17:21Going back to the 15th century, they were very popular throughout Europe in the late 19th and early
17:2720th century. Alexander Morton and Company was a Scottish firm that made textiles. So they were
17:35approached by the congested districts board of Ireland. Their purpose was to promote industry in
17:43some heavily populated areas. The board went to Alexander Morton and Company and proposed
17:48that they would set up looms in the town of Kilibegs in County Donegal in Northwest Ireland.
17:56And they were promising affordable labor, subsidize the construction of multiple factories,
18:03and provide a deep sea port for shipping their carpets all over the world.
18:07So it was a great offer and Morton and Company jumped at it. So starting around 1900,
18:14they were started weaving pile carpets like this in the Ushak style with an arts and crafts influence
18:20in Kilibegs, Ireland. Okay. Now Morton and Company had their own designers. And the design of this carpet
18:28was done by Gavin Morton and GK Robertson. And in their designs, really what they wanted to do was show
18:35the
18:35contrast between the intricate floral elements and plain areas of color, a more dramatic effect to the eye.
18:44So do you have any idea how much this carpet is worth?
18:47Well, I know it's a special rug. I, as far as how much it's worth, I was told by a
18:52rug
18:53guy that I took it to in Eureka that it was worth about $3,000. Okay.
18:59My boyfriend thinks it's worth $2.2 million. $2.2 million. This is a pretty big range between
19:06$3,000 and $2.2 million. This Donegal carpet, in auction, would sell for between $20,000 and $30,000
19:15today. Wow. Wow. So thank you so much for bringing it in. Wow. That's great. Thank you so much.
19:22Thank you. Well, this was my great grandfather's pocket watch that he got when he retired.
19:33Uh, he was a steel man. Um, I don't know much about it other than I looked up the serial
19:38number
19:38and apparently it was made in 1905. I saw it in a vintage store window as I was driving down
19:48the street.
19:49I stopped, I parked, I went in, I bought it. How much did you have to pay for it?
19:54Ninety. I'm hoping that somebody's horse, favorite horse died and then they did this.
20:02But who knows? That's really all I know about it. Um, cause I haven't had it that long. It's not
20:07a family heirloom or anything, but maybe for my grandkids.
20:09Yeah. This is a painting by Jane Stewart, who was the daughter of Gilbert Stewart, who did all the
20:22famous George Washington paintings during the colonial period. And on the back it says,
20:28Miss Sarah Hart. I don't know who Sarah Hart was. And so that's what this is.
20:41I keep them up your round, but I have a special place in the entryway for holiday items. So I
20:46love
20:47the holidays. These are decorative candy containers. They're holiday decorations or ornaments. But they
20:51served a purpose that you could actually store a small biscuit, cookie, a candy inside. So you can
20:57give the item to the child. They'd have a sweet and a snack and then it became a decoration thereafter.
21:02I'll actually show you on this one here. So she detaches in half and this would be the storage
21:09container. This one is a quite large example. Yes. And you can see the size of his candy head
21:16Yeah. Is much larger. A lot of room for candy in there. A lot of room for a lot of
21:21candy.
21:22Lots of cookies. He is much larger than we commonly see for a seeded bunny candy container.
21:27Are they glass size? They're glass size. Each of these is more or less handmade. There are molds,
21:32but they're all handmade, hand painted and hand dressed. So there'll be slight variation to each
21:37one. And they're primarily made of either a pressed cardboard, sort of a composition or paper mache
21:41material. And then a lot of the cloth material, the fabric is a felt like material. And each of these,
21:47I believe, was made in Germany. They were most likely made for a number of years, several decades even.
21:51So a comfortable Circa is sometime between 1900 and 1920. Highly collectible. Many of these were made
21:57in numerous different sizes. So this is a fairly large bunny, about a medium-sized witch. And that's
22:03a small Santa. The value ranges and condition is very important. However, they display lovely.
22:10Collectively, you have an auction estimate value here of $8,000 to $12,000.
22:15Oh, wow. Wow. That's great. That's great news. Which one would you say would be the most valuable?
22:23At this present time, Halloween is a very hot field. Oh, really?
22:27It is. Okay. Christmas has always been the king,
22:30but right now Halloween is taking the position. So this witch at auction could easily
22:36fetch $3,000 to $5,000. Oh, wow. I'll have to look for more witches.
22:40Yes. But I think I'll have to keep her though.
22:45I got that thrift store. I was looking for frames, actually, because I'm an amateur artist.
22:50And I saw this old frame and it had been painted black. It had overpainted the painting as well.
22:56But I bought the frame. I paid $3 for it. That was about 10 years ago. I took it home
23:01and deframed
23:02sheets and I could see the color on the edge of where it was overlapped. It was still bright. So
23:07I
23:08cut some acetone and cleaned it up. And I got down the signature and didn't know who that was.
23:14Looked it up on the internet. I was always a known artist. Right. Good for you.
23:18That was fun. Yep. Yeah. Well, you found something nice. This is a painting by Edgar Payne and it depicts
23:26the Canyon de Chez in Northern Arizona. It's an oil on canvas board and probably executed in the 1930s
23:36to early 1940s. Edgar Payne was born in 1883 and he died in 1947. He only studied art briefly at
23:45the Art
23:45Institute of Chicago. He was mainly self-taught and earned a living painting murals and signs and houses.
23:55And then eventually in 1917, he got a big commission through the Santa Fe Railroad to go to tour the
24:05Southwest and paint as a form of advertising. And that's the first time that he visited the Canyon de
24:12Chez. And he loved it so much that he revisited over and over again until the early 1940s.
24:20One thing that is notable about these paintings is the majestic mountains and the colors that he used.
24:31He was known as a plein air painter and he would go outdoors and paint at all different times of
24:39the day.
24:39And another thing that he's known for is the scale and the discrepancy in the scale of the mountains and
24:49the figures.
24:50Really?
24:52Do you have any idea what the value is on something like this? Have you researched it at all?
25:01Well, a local art dealer in our town, they offered me like 14k for it after I found out who
25:06the painter was.
25:06But I wasn't interested in selling it. Well, at auction, it would easily sell within the range of $15,000
25:16to $25,000.
25:19Many of these paintings that have come up for auction have gone for much more in the 30s and even
25:26low 40s.
25:27That was a good $3 investment anyway. Right.
25:39With Salt Lake City's hot summer days and cold winter nights, some plants here get to live their best lives
25:46indoors year round. We are in Red Butte's original greenhouse. It was built in 1992. This greenhouse
25:53specifically is our cacti greenhouse. We let the temperatures fluctuate a lot more than our
25:58traditional greenhouses. We have lots of agave. We have a puncha, which is prickly pear, which is very
26:03common in the region. We have an assortment of native and non-native cacti. There are over 150 prickly
26:12pear species worldwide. My grandfather was born in 1922 in Schwarze, Germany. He's Jewish and the 1930s
26:23weren't a good time to be Jewish in Germany. When he was 16 years old, he was able to take
26:29a train,
26:29the Kindertransport to England, which really saved his life. He was one of, I think, several hundred
26:35people who were able to do so. And then within a few years, he joined the Pioneer Corps. He was
26:42eventually able to join a combat unit after Winston Churchill realized that there were a number of
26:49German-born Jewish individuals who were considered enemy aliens in England, but they spoke fluent
26:57German and they could actually be assets in war. Many of his comrades were, their parents and siblings
27:05and aunts and uncles died in the concentration camps. So these individuals wanted nothing more
27:11than to fight the Nazis. When the opportunity presented itself to actually join a combat troop,
27:19he had, I think, minutes to decide whether or not he wanted to join. And then upon joining,
27:25had to change his name, change his origin story. So overnight, being a German, he became English.
27:32He joined the Church of England and he could never tell a soul his true identity.
27:39So what you brought is a World War II number 10 commando archive. When you think about it,
27:45we don't have reconnaissance satellites at that point in history. There's limited aerial reconnaissance
27:50available. A lot of what was going to happen needed to be planned based on human intel, hands-on,
27:59and who better to do that than commandos. These folks needed to be problem solvers. They needed to
28:06be able to think on their feet and think creatively because if you go across the channel courtesy of
28:11the Royal Navy who would insert them and you get caught in bad, it's up to you. Nobody's coming to
28:18save you.
28:18You have to figure it out. They needed a very special group of young men to do this.
28:26He did leave you a legacy. He left us some artifacts. For instance, the uniform, it's a British battle
28:34dress jacket with these number 10 commando titles. Now, do you know which troop he was in within number
28:4010? I believe he was in troop three. Troop three was the troop that was primarily made up of
28:47Germans who were Jewish. Casualty rate among number 10 commander and number three troop. I believe I've
28:57seen references to 50 percent. So there just really isn't that much of this material out in the world.
29:04He's a staff sergeant and you have the 39-45 ribbon bar. You have the Italy bar and then his
29:12defense bar.
29:13So apparently he made some raids in Italy as well. Wow. I didn't know that. You've got photographs
29:19of him while he's serving. Here he is wearing the beret, got his Fariburn Sykes commando knife.
29:27There's a lot to this that gives us at least hints of where he was and what he was doing.
29:34These were
29:35some of the few people who had an opportunity to train and go do something about it.
29:43And it just gives you goosebumps. It does. Being in the presence of that material.
29:49That cultural and historical value translates through to monetary value as well.
29:57If we were to put an insurance value on this set, this would fall very easily into the $20,000
30:03to $25,000 range.
30:05Wow.
30:07Never really thought about how much it would be worth monetarily because it is so sentimental. That's amazing.
30:16This is the kind of stuff that movies are made of. The things that these guys did.
30:23I got it as a gift from a friend. They got it from an old video rental place in a
30:29grocery store.
30:30And when they were shutting it down, he got to keep all the movie signs and gave you this one
30:35because
30:35I'm a big Trekkie. That's from the movie Star Trek Generations where Kirk and Picard teamed up. And
30:42uh, yeah, we just put a light behind it and have it in our basement right now.
30:51This is a sewing machine that belonged to my great grandmother, um, passed down to her daughter and
30:58her daughter and now me. So it's just been sitting on a shelf. I think my mom was the first
31:03one that
31:03put it on a shelf and now it's my turn. It's a solid chunk of metal here.
31:13My parents were big collectors and they loved Japan. They made numerous trips there. They had a
31:21large collection of what I believe is Rosangian pottery. They sold most of it in the early 70s and
31:30it was this glaze here. So this is the remainder of the collection that they had.
31:36Oh, really? And what do you know about Kitauji Rosangian? Well, I know he was a poet, a chef. These
31:45have
31:45been family friends since I've been a child. And this vessel was always outside with the lemonade and a
31:53bamboo dipper. And I can't tell you how many floral arrangements my mother and I did in this vessel.
32:03Um, so it's, it's very special to me. Where did they buy these pieces? I believe they bought them
32:10directly from the artist. Kitauji Rosangian was born in 1883 and he died in 1959. Kitauji Rosangian was an
32:20extremely important seminal artist in the whole history of modern contemporary Japanese ceramics.
32:27He, uh, was also a calligrapher. He was a painter. He was a poet. And he collected classical
32:34Japanese ceramics. And his collection was destroyed in the Tokyo earthquake in 1923.
32:41And so after that he decided to make his own, his own ceramics. He received various honors,
32:48the last in 1959 when he was named a national treasure, which he refused. I heard that.
32:54All of these Japanese forms, bizen wear, oribei wear, all of these are reflected in the five pieces
33:01that you have here. The, the most outstanding of which is your well. Okay. Actually, when you look
33:09back in Chinese history, this is modeled after a Han dynasty, second century BC to AD prototype.
33:15I understand that you drink out of this, you said? I do weekly. It goes through the dishwasher.
33:22And what about this piece? I think it's an ashtray, but I'm not sure.
33:28It's actually an incense burner. Oh, it is. Yes. And it probably originally had a silver cover.
33:33You have various dishes that were part of his whole display for his kitchen and he used them in his
33:39restaurant. This is it regardless of the damage. And there is a restoration here. And I think one
33:47in one of the handles here, this is probably the most unusual piece of the collection. All of them
33:53are signed with his characteristic signature, which is a row. It's like a square. I think all of these
33:59pieces were made in the 1950s. I understand you don't have the boxes, right? At auction,
34:06this piece alone is worth between $6,000 and $8,000.
34:12Wow. Even with the damage. Yes. All together, I would say your five pieces would constitute about
34:23$10,000 to $15,000 at auction, regardless of whether you have the sign boxes.
34:38These pieces are quite rare. You don't see them come up at auction very often.
34:46My wife and I went to a little consignment shop and I saw this and I went, whoa, this thing,
34:52that can't be real, I didn't think, because the colors were so beautiful. So I asked the lady,
34:58I said, how much is it? And she says, well, that depends because the old gentleman that's consigning
35:02it wants somebody to love and treasure it because it's got a lot of sentimental value to it.
35:07It was a gentleman in late 80s or early 90s. He was pretty old. He was born in that town.
35:12When he was in his teens, he had an uncle that owned an antique shop down in Los Angeles. And
35:18he said he'd
35:18come across a print and he said he didn't like the frame on it. So he asked if he could
35:23send the frame
35:24up and could the kid build him a new frame for it. And then within a week or two after
35:28he got it,
35:29his uncle passed away unexpectedly at a young age. So he kind of just put it as print into the
35:35garage.
35:36And for the next 70 some odd years, through multiple marriages and divorces, he always carried
35:42this with him because it reminded him of his uncle. And he decided to disassemble it. When he did,
35:47this was the backing. I would have loved to be there for for his reaction. When you're peeling back the
35:53print that's been there that you think nothing of. Right. And you go to get something out of a frame
35:57and lo and behold, this is hiding behind it. Yeah. What did you have to pay if you don't mind
36:02me asking?
36:03$450 for it. So this is a late 19th century cigar advertising sign depicting Henry George,
36:10made for the Hirshhorn Mac and Company, makers based out of New York. Henry George was an economist,
36:16he was a social activist, he was a journalist. He was regarded at one point as one of the most
36:22popular individuals in the United States. Wow. Known for a book entitled Progress and Poverty. He spoke to
36:30your common man, he spoke to your laborer, he spoke to your working Joe that was going through the
36:35industrial revolution. Okay. And we can date it pretty concretely to about 1895 to 1900. And if you look down
36:44here at the very, very bottom, the Tuscarora advertising company, they were established in
36:50mid 1880s. And they originally started off by selling burlap bags with logos on them. Sure. And
36:57they quickly progressed as technology advanced to doing signs to doing anything and everything
37:02advertising. These were the people that were doing Coca-Cola signs that were taking orders from all
37:07the country for advertising signs. So this sign is a single sided tin sign with embossing that has
37:15lithography on it. Okay. Now they took it a step further and really pioneered offset lithography.
37:21Now that added an additional step where once that original plate was made, they would transfer the image
37:27to a sheet of rubber and then roll the rubber contained in the image through a press that would then
37:33press it
37:34onto metal without destroying the original plate. Right. So they could do a lot more volume.
37:39They could be a lot more detailed. And the rubber was more forgiving as you're rolling over a hard
37:43metal surface. Imagine if you're trying to press that into a stone. Right. It's not going to go so
37:47great. So you've got great subject matter with an important American figure. Right. You've got cigars,
37:53which appeals to Tabacchiana collectors, and quite frankly, most people with a man cave, right? Right.
37:57There you go. It's an attractive subject with a prominent American individual. If this sign came up to auction
38:02today, I would put a conservative auction estimate on it of $4,000 to $6,000. Wow. Wow. Okay. That's
38:11pretty cool.
38:20I went to a yard sale and I wasn't even looking for this. I was looking for some yard art.
38:27And after I bought
38:29a big chicken from my yard, the lady said, I have some other stuff in the back, if you want
38:34to look
38:35at it. And I said, sure. And this was sitting there. I picked it up. Yeah. $100. I think I
38:45got a pretty good deal.
38:47Um, I found it at an estate sale a number of years ago. It's a, to the best of my
38:51knowledge,
38:52a Seth Thomas clock from, uh, about 1913, 1915. Uh, not sure if that's accurate or not. Not sure
39:00if it's authentic or not been wanting to have it looked at to see if it's worth getting fixed up
39:04and getting running again. And it's actually the same era as my house. So matches the decor.
39:09And how much did you have to pay for it? Uh, like $10.
39:16We were at a video game convention in 2012 and we were listening to a panel conversation. And one
39:23of the people there was Steve Golson, who was one of the developers of the game that would become
39:28Ms. Pac-Man. He seemed like an affable guy. And we thought, let's go see if we can talk to
39:32him. And
39:33we had had a Pac-Man wedding cake at our wedding. And we went up to him and said, Hey,
39:38we love this game.
39:39Can we show you a picture of our wedding cake? And he said, yes. And he loved the picture so
39:44much.
39:44He asked me to email it to him so we could show the other people who worked on the game
39:47with him.
39:48After that email, he reached back out and said, Hey, can I have your address? And then a couple
39:52weeks later, these items showed up in the mail. What's the content of the letter?
39:56It's kind of describing when we met him and that he enjoyed seeing the photo of our wedding cake.
40:02And then it talks about these items that he's including. They're your little windup Pac-Man toys.
40:07In the letter, he describes that he bought them and then gave them to other people
40:12who worked on the game. And then he also mentions that the display came from his personal collection,
40:16which I thought was a really lovely detail for him to include. And then he signed it for us.
40:20Did you play Pac-Man growing up?
40:22Oh, definitely. I had parents who definitely taught me all the tricks of Ms. Pac-Man in particular,
40:29many a quarter spent at the arcade.
40:31The original Pac-Man was released in Japan in May of 1980 and came to the United States in October
40:37of 1980.
40:37And it was the biggest phenomenon in the United States for arcade machines.
40:42But in 1980, 81, it started to get a little tired. And they were looking for new ways to refresh
40:49the
40:50cabinets. And there were a bunch of companies making conversion kits where you could go to your arcade
40:55cabinet and replace the glass, replace the stickers, replace the memory board, and have a whole new
41:01game. And Ms. Pac-Man was released in 1982. And it reinvigorated the whole Pac-Man craze all over again.
41:08But it wasn't originally Ms. Pac-Man. Do you know what it was called?
41:11It was called Crazy Auto.
41:12And that was the conversion kit that Steve Golsan at General Computer helped come up with.
41:18It wasn't released on just the arcade cabinets and cocktail cabinets. It was also released on home
41:23computers by the Commodore 64 and the home video game systems like the Atari 2600. And what you have
41:29here is a couple of little wind-up Ms. Pac-Man, but then you have this advertising display. This stand
41:35-up
41:36is originally for the Atari 2600 VCS, video computer system. And it's from about 1982. You'd punch it
41:42out. You'd set up on the top of a shelf and had a little clockwork mechanism in the back, powered
41:46by
41:46a battery. And Ms. Pac-Man would just swing a little bit. This thing is untouched. A little bit of
41:53damage,
41:53but it's never been punched out. It's never been set up. And in the advertising world, an untouched,
41:59unused sign is like the pinnacle. This is probably one of the best examples I've seen.
42:07Oh my gosh. A great letter. It doesn't have a lot of value on its own,
42:12but it really ties all the pieces together. We estimate at auction for all of these pieces,
42:18we'd say around $800 to $1,200. Wonderful. That's so great to know. Thank you.
42:24Most of the values in this. Yeah. It's these little guys that are $40 to $50 each. Right. Totally.
42:31It's a heck of a wedding gift. Yep. Not bad. It was a few years late. I'll take it.
42:39Red Butte Gardens' vast collection of plants includes around 200 varieties of roses.
42:46This rose garden is special because we have designed it with roses that are well adapted to our region.
42:54And are disease resistant as well as absolutely beautiful. One of the rare varieties of roses that
43:00we have here in the rose garden is La France, which is considered by many to be the first hybrid
43:07tea that
43:08was developed, which means it was the first of the modern roses. La France has a beautiful pink rose,
43:14and it has just an amazing fragrance.
43:20I brought a bunch of comic books that my husband bought when they were brand new. And they've been in
43:24my mother-in-law's basement for about 50 years. When she was getting ready to go out of her house
43:30about 10 years ago, I went back there and helped move things and I found this box.
43:35I'm so jealous of your husband's experience. The fact that he was able to buy these directly off
43:40the newsstand when they were brand new. He was between 11 and 13, I believe. And he would bike
43:45down to the neighborhood drugstore to buy them.
43:47So we know exactly what he paid for them. He was paying 12 cents a piece.
43:5012 cents. That's amazing.
43:52It is. I mean, all the comics you have here today range from what we call the silver age of
43:56comics,
43:561956 to 1970. You have a mix of both DC and Marvel comics, but our hero of the day is
44:04Spider-Man.
44:05Amazing Spider-Man that is. I mean, he is by far, in my opinion, the most recognizable,
44:11fan favorite child hero of superheroes today. For the books you have here, your earliest
44:16Amazing Spider-Man being issue five, which is from 1963. The reason this book in particular
44:22is a fan favorite is because as the one and only Dr. Doom, evil bad guy, Victor Von Doom first
44:29appeared in Fantastic Four issue five. This is his first crossover into Amazing Spider-Man. We have
44:35Amazing Spider-Man six first appearance of the lizard, Dr. Kirk Connors staple in the Amazing
44:41Spider-Man world here. Spider-Man 15. This is first appearance of Kraven, the hunter pseudo like hero,
44:49antihero villain. And then my favorite book here on the table, Amazing Spider-Man annual one,
44:56this book featuring the first appearance of the sinister six. It's all the greatest Spider-Man villains
45:02in the second year of the standalone title. When it comes to value of comics, it's all condition
45:08based. We would say these books range anywhere from 2.0 to maybe a 4.0, 4.5. That meaning
45:17your
45:17husband absolutely loved these books. He read them multiple times. The Kraven, the hunter book is a
45:24little bit rougher on the end of the spectrum value wise. We would place this book at 700 to a
45:29thousand
45:29dollars today. Wow. The Amazing Spider-Man annual one, similar to the two above it. This book falls
45:36in the 800 to 1200 dollar range. But these are just four books on the table. Everything that you have
45:45here fanned out is beautiful. There are so many iconic key books in here mixed in conservatively at auction
45:51for the collection. This would easily be a 10 to 15 thousand dollar group of comics.
45:59Not what I expected to hear at all. That's amazing. That's fantastic. Mike would have been pleased. He
46:05loved these books. He loved sci-fi. He'd been so excited. That's great.
46:12So I got this. This was gifted to me after graduating medical school. It's from my great
46:18grandpa. It's the practice of medicine by William Osler. And I think it's a first edition of the book.
46:24Now to graduate, did you have to read that thing? No, not this exactly. Blood Ludding is still in
46:30here. Yeah, he was actually a proponent of the blood Ludding. So that's still here. Well, it's a
46:37Japanese copy of the Gibson. It's a 1971 Ibanez. Hollow body. The Gibson look alike. Father-in-law
46:47was had it down in his basement and he wanted $35 for it. So I gave him 35 bucks. Well,
46:52I play it
46:53every day. Every morning just play. Yep, it's fun. My grandma purchased it when she was in the UK
47:01during World War II. She served in the Royal Navy. So she brought it back after that when she moved
47:08back to the United States. My grandma passed away, I believe, 2014. My dad and I were helping clean out
47:13her house. And my dad gave it to me from her book collection. He knew that I liked Tolkien. I've
47:19been
47:19a big fan for most of my life. And it's actually kind of how my wife and I met. We
47:22were at a Halloween
47:23party. Someone was talking about Tolkien. I mentioned that I'm fairly knowledgeable about it. So we started
47:29talking. And then I asked her on a date and I brought it to our first date. It's in no
47:35small
47:35part how we met. That's delightful. This was Tolkien's very first published book, The Hobbit.
47:42It began as a series of bedtime stories for his children. And he later codified it and published it
47:49in England. And then he spent most of the rest of his life creating this world of Middle Earth.
47:55And by 1954 and 55, the three volumes comprising The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring,
48:04The Two Towers, and The Return of the King were first published. And that just made his career.
48:10Back when your grandmother purchased this book, a new copy of The Hobbit would have cost perhaps a
48:18dollar or less. On the rear flap of the dust jacket, only on the 1,500 copies of the first
48:28printing of the first edition, there's a typographical error. They compare, rightly so,
48:35The Hobbit and Tolkien to his mentor Lewis Carroll or C.L. Dodgson. Where they spell Dodgson's name,
48:43they put an E in it. And that's a hand-corrected typographical error. And that's how you can tell
48:51the true first printing of the first edition from all later printings. Here we can see the publisher,
48:58The Hobbit, or there and back again by John Ronald Rule Tolkien, published in London in 1937. All of the
49:08illustrations in the book and the dust jacket itself are drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien. Most 20th century
49:16novels in particular have dust jackets or dust wrappers. And this one has its dust wrapper, likely
49:24fewer than 20-25% of those 1,500 copies, these dust jackets remain. And this one, it shows where
49:34the book itself, the boards show where, the dust jacket shows where. There's a small piece missing
49:43from this front corner and the back corner as well. But it's remarkably intact, which makes it even
49:48scarcer. Condition and the presence of dust jackets are everything on modern first editions. So this is
49:57maybe a good plus to very good copy. But the jacket is remarkably difficult to find in any condition.
50:07I would estimate this copy at retail would bring $100,000. Oh my god. That is significantly more than what
50:18I
50:18thought. Oh my god. That is a non-insignificant amount of money that I've been carrying around.
50:30Slightly too casually. My precious, right? I should stop telling people I have this.
50:38It's too late now.
50:42That's wild. A fine copy and a fine jacket at retail would bring a quarter of a million dollars.
50:50Oh my gosh.
50:51And now it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
50:55And I brought my grandmother's mustache cup. This is one of her prized possessions. I found out it's
51:01it's pretty rare for a mustache cup to be from France, but also worth not that much money. So,
51:08well, we're so glad we came here. And we had a great time today. We went to the
51:13Asian booth to have my wedding kimono that was actually my mother's appraised. They said it was
51:20worth five to eight hundred dollars. They said it's not much of a market anymore for wedding kimonos.
51:25But I think it's beautiful and it hangs on our wall. And I brought this pocket watch that belonged to
51:31my father-in-law and I found out the fob's worth more than everything else we brought together.
51:34I brought with me this seal from Phoenix this morning. Got stopped by TSA. Really only came
51:41to show my love for PBS. Long live PBS. Love you.
51:46Well, this one is a Danish piece. And this one I think is Australian piece. And they're glass pieces.
51:51And together they're worth about eight hundred dollars. And I purchased them at online auction,
51:57estate auction. And I'm glad to be here. And I'm exhausted.
52:03All I can say about my day is antique watch on my wrist, antique buttons on my vest,
52:11getting to see the Antiques Roadshow Appraisal All-Stars. Man, this is the best.
52:18Thanks for watching. See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
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