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00:04Antiques Roadshow is on the hunt for treasures at Grant's Farm in St. Louis.
00:09I brought a trophy in that I used to use as a trash can.
00:13I'm shaking, not because I'm nervous, but because I'm so excited.
00:35Grant's Farm is the popular St. Louis attraction where Antiques Roadshow has set up to welcome thousands of eager collectors.
00:44Named after the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, the attraction includes a modest cabin that Grant
00:51built prior to the Civil War.
00:53In 1907, the cabin was moved to its current location by August Anheuser-Busch Sr., former head of the brewing
01:00company, Anheuser-Busch.
01:03Over a century later, the Busch family still owns Grant's Farm.
01:08You don't have to go very far to find historical treasures here at Roadshow Today.
01:15St. Louis!
01:17I've been waiting for it for months.
01:19Antiques Roadshow, here we go!
01:21Hey, hey, hey, hey!
01:23Well, it's a 1965 DS330 Gibson, it's the model.
01:28Tuners have been changed, which affect the value a little bit, but not tremendously.
01:32This is roughly an $8,000 guitar now, so you did good, and I bet you paid a lot less.
01:38We got a bargain, a hundred and a quarter.
01:41Good deal.
01:46This was painted by my great-grandfather, Hermann Petzel.
01:50He was an immigrant from Germany.
01:52He was a member of one of the local German churches, St. Laborious, and he was part of the German
01:59choir.
01:59It was as much a social club as a singing club.
02:03And this is what is called a schnitzelbank prompt.
02:09It's like cue cards for a song.
02:11And the schnitzelbank being a shaving bench in translation.
02:16You name the different items, all in German, and then you sing the song.
02:22Is das nicht dein schnitzelbank?
02:24And then the response would be, ja, das ist dein schnitzelbank.
02:28And then you would name the different things, crits and cross, grossermann, tallermann.
02:34And then you would move down the line, and each time you would repeat everything as you want
02:39until you got back to the schnitzelbank.
02:42It would be kind of a mnemonic for German-Americans in St. Louis?
02:47Yes, yes.
02:47And it wasn't unusual for breweries to print them out with their label and give them to the bars and
02:56stuff
02:57so that they would sing the Falstaff or the Anheuser-Busch version of the schnitzelbank.
03:03This would have been his own version that he was, things he was acquainted with.
03:07I also learned that your great-grandfather was kind of a hero, right?
03:11Yes.
03:12This was painted in 1904, and in 1905, his choir was at a venue in St. Louis County.
03:20There was an 18 or 19-year-old who got in trouble swimming.
03:25And so they immediately turned to Herman because everybody knew Herman was the best swimmer.
03:30And unfortunately, he overpowered Herman, and they both drowned.
03:35He was posthumously awarded a Carnegie Medal for heroism, along with a stipend that was very helpful
03:45for my great-grandmother and her six kids, one of which was my maternal grandmother.
03:52It really tells the story of St. Louis around 1904, what was going on,
03:58especially what was going on with German-Americans.
04:00And most anybody from St. Louis would easily recognize Union Station.
04:07Right.
04:08And then being good Germans who were very much against the temperance movement
04:14would include a rather evil-looking caricature of Carrie Nation.
04:19And Carrie Nation, of course, being the famous suffragette and also...
04:23And the temperance.
04:24Temperance.
04:25Who is known for breaking open beer kegs with a hatchet.
04:28It's hard to know, really, without testing it, about the paint.
04:31It could be oil, but it appears to be painted on literally a cotton curtain.
04:39If I were to insure this piece, I would put a value of $6,000 on it.
04:45Yeah.
04:46I'm going to cry.
04:46Yeah.
04:48It's...
04:49It'd be impossible to replace, of course.
04:53Oh, gosh.
04:57Of course.
04:58My mother would have been so proud.
05:01It's more than I would have ever thought.
05:12Grant's Farm is an iconic St. Louis attraction.
05:15This has been the home to the Bush family for generations.
05:19Back in 1903, the Bush family acquired this property.
05:22And in 1954, it became open to the public, hosting over a half a million people each year.
05:28One of the things that makes us the most unique is being able to interact and get up close
05:32to all the different animal varieties that we have here, including, of course, a visit
05:35with the world-famous Budweiser Clydesdales.
05:41I purchased it locally here in St. Louis at an estate sale.
05:45And when I opened it up, I saw the Lucille Ball autograph and the card and thought it was
05:52interesting.
05:53And I closed it back up and went to pay for it.
05:57And I paid $10 for it.
05:59And then as I was leaving, because it was in stack with games in it.
06:03And so I don't think they realized, the person that was checking me out, that it had Lucy
06:07affiliation in it.
06:08So we were talking and we think that, don't know the time of it, but that it might have
06:13been donated for charity for an auction here in St. Louis.
06:17So that's all I know.
06:19Gotcha.
06:20So when you came in today and you first showed us this, I was taking a look at this and
06:25it's
06:26immediate, it's a handbag.
06:27It looks like a purse.
06:28And the coolest thing about this is that it's more than meets the eye.
06:33Obviously, it is not a purse.
06:35It's backgammoned.
06:36And it has some pieces and things in there.
06:38And the very little you know is that it was probably donated for a charity auction.
06:42And that actually does make sense.
06:44She was a very generous person.
06:45And you have this card here that's typed up and very cursorily just says,
06:50Lucille Ball's backgammon game.
06:51That's it.
06:52It's a very short and sweet message.
06:54And then it obviously came with this signed photograph.
06:57Is that an original signature, you think?
06:59This is actually an original autograph on the photograph.
07:02So it's the kind of thing that when she sent it in for a charity auction, she obviously
07:05put that with it.
07:07I think they probably typed up that little card.
07:10Most likely, it was one of those kind of silent auctions where they would have something
07:14sitting out and people could leave bids.
07:15And that's the type of little card they would have typed up for it.
07:17We don't know exactly when this happened.
07:20My guess is it would probably be early 80s.
07:23We do know that she was fond of playing backgammon.
07:26She was part of a Hollywood set that used to get together and play cards.
07:29You always hear these stories about Gregory Peck and Lucille Ball and all these people getting
07:33together to play cards, which is pretty cool.
07:35We're talking about it right now because everybody still loves Lucy.
07:38I mean, she was the original that so many women who came after her who were comedians.
07:42But beyond that, she started her own production company.
07:45So it was pretty rare at the time that she owned Desilu and started her own company.
07:49So she was really obviously a power figure in Hollywood.
07:54But you said you paid?
07:55$10 for it.
07:57I think in an auction right now, we have a lot of comps for other small handbags and
08:01personal items of hers would be about $1,500 to $2,500 now.
08:07Thank you so much.
08:16Well, we bought this at an auction a couple of six months ago, paid a couple hundred dollars.
08:22We're hoping it's going to be a little bit more than that.
08:30It's what they used to call a newspaper morgue book.
08:34It's basically every copy of the St. Louis Globe Democrat for the month of September 1951.
08:39And it's got the color pages, got all the black and white stuff in it.
08:44Everything's there.
08:51I brought this dagger that I believe is a World War II OSS dagger.
08:56It was issued to my dad's uncle, so my great uncle.
09:00And what did he do during World War II?
09:01He was in the OSS and that's pretty much all I know.
09:05So you don't know any details of his service?
09:07No, I think they weren't supposed to talk about it.
09:09And do you know what the OSS is?
09:12My family always said it was the precursor to like the CIA, like an intelligence agency type.
09:16It's exactly what it was.
09:18The Office of Strategic Services was established in 1942 by FDR to be our first real intelligence agency.
09:25This knife is exactly what you believe it to be.
09:28It is an OSS stiletto.
09:30It's copied from the Fairbanks Sykes Commando fighting knife that the British developed.
09:34You'll notice that it's not marked anywhere.
09:38And that's called sterile because these were being used behind enemy lines and you didn't want to be able to
09:43trace them back to a country of origin or what units might be using them.
09:48It was made by a company called Landers, Frary & Clark out of Connecticut.
09:52They had made things during World War I, including fighting knives and canteens.
09:56But that's not what their primary business was.
09:59Do you have any idea what they really did in peacetime?
10:02Nope. Nope. Spatulas?
10:06You're exactly right.
10:07They made everything that was made out of metal from kitchen implements like spatulas to toasters.
10:15The firm was started in 1865 right after the Civil War and was in business to 1965 making every sort
10:22of little metal item you could possibly think of.
10:25So collectors actually refer to this scabbard, the sheath for the knife, as the pancake flipper scabbard.
10:31Those grooves give you a place to put your belt, and the handle supports the leather sheath.
10:37Do you have any idea what this might be worth?
10:40No, not really.
10:41It's a rare and desirable knife.
10:43They only made about 10,000 of these.
10:44LF&C received a contract to make these knives in 1942, and they delivered them between 1942 and 1943.
10:51The contract price was $2.03 a piece.
10:55This one is in just about pristine condition.
10:58The only thing missing is there was a little rubber O-ring that went right here that held the hilt
11:05to the top of the scabbard.
11:08In the condition it's in, I think a conservative auction estimate is $2,500 to $3,500.
11:15All right.
11:15And it could easily do more than that.
11:18All right.
11:19They do make fakes of these.
11:20This one's 100% real and legit.
11:22All right.
11:23Cool.
11:27I brought in my Adam car that I got from my dad.
11:32I guess he got it as a Christmas present when he was little from his grandma and grandpa.
11:37And down the line, I was at my great-grandma's house, and I would play with it.
11:42When the time came and she had to move out of her house, this is one of those things that
11:45she gave to me.
11:46I never really played too much with it.
11:48Just always would get it out and kind of like, this is the coolest thing in the world.
11:51And my wife thinks I'm a hoarder for some things.
11:56But this is one of the cool things that I have.
11:58It's got a tag on one side.
12:00I guess it was underneath the Christmas tree.
12:02And then my dad looks like he scribbled his name at some point on the top edge over on the
12:08other side.
12:09Yana Zawa is the name of the company in Japan who produced this toy.
12:12Early 50s, 19, mid-50s.
12:14The overall condition's great.
12:16And the lithography, the detail, the patterns that are on it are really eye-catching.
12:20What it's made of is a tin plate.
12:22It's a sheet metal, a really thin sheet metal.
12:24And it's laid out on flat sheets and stamped with lithography.
12:28The nice thing about doing the lithograph tin toys is they're able to simply change the lithograph.
12:33They would produce this particular model, the 27 Atom, for maybe a couple years and then change it slightly to
12:39change the number.
12:40Therefore, creating a new toy without having the cost of retooling the entire assembly line.
12:45One thing that's great is that it has a space theme, it's a race car, it has this imaginative rocket
12:51ship design.
12:52So it has a really wide appeal.
12:55The front has a triangle adorning the Atom 27 badge.
12:59And then that hood ornament just screams to me space race, space theme.
13:05Now, on the back, as the wheels would spin, it would emit sparks and they'd actually shoot out almost like
13:11a rocket out of the back of the car.
13:12Oh, wow.
13:14Now, condition is king.
13:16It would have originally had rubber slips over the tire, so it would have gotten better traction.
13:20Down here, you have what looks like some brush paint, some touch-up.
13:24I'm happy to tell you they are factory touch-ups.
13:28So when the toy was created and stretched out, it might have left little creases, little tears in the litho.
13:34No way.
13:35And the factory would go back and very sloppily touch it up.
13:38And over the course of time, the colors fade a little different.
13:41And that's why we notice it so prominently now.
13:44And then on the front, we have your box up here.
13:46Now, if you watch Antiques Roadshow, we've said it many times before,
13:50but the box is extremely important in helping the value of the piece.
13:54One step further that makes this extra special is this box decal is in red background, which I've never seen
14:01before.
14:01Oh, wow.
14:02I've seen this decal, but it always has a black background.
14:05Huh.
14:05So just the box alone should easily fetch $3,000 or so.
14:13Really?
14:13Now, when you have the combination of the car and the box together, this would fetch at auction between $6
14:21,000 and $9,000.
14:22Holy cow.
14:24Wow.
14:26That's crazy.
14:27With the right bidders competing, this could zoom even past that.
14:31Holy cow.
14:32I didn't realize it was that special.
14:35This is a ready kilowatt sign from Union Electric from 1929 and super original.
14:43They actually put it on the street before they'd go into the hole.
14:46So if you fall in it, you're really down.
14:55So we brought in a ceramic vase.
14:57We actually inherited it from my mother-in-law who passed a few years ago.
15:01So we don't know too much about it, but inside we did find a certificate for a pottery.
15:10So who knows?
15:11But hopefully we'll find out some more today.
15:18It was given to me by my mother in 1972.
15:21She got it from her mother in probably 1945.
15:25And then prior to that, my grandmother got it from her aunts when I don't know.
15:30We have here a sapphire and diamond ring.
15:35The diamond weighs by formula approximately a carat and a quarter.
15:40And the sapphire is just over two, a little over two carats, about two and a half carats.
15:44The ring was probably made by a very high-end jeweler in New York City.
15:50The diamond is beautiful, but the sapphire is really special.
15:53One of the things that we can't always determine in this context is whether or not a stone has been
16:00subject to treatment.
16:01So there are certain inclusions that you see when a stone's been treated.
16:05And what we're seeing under magnification is this is a natural color.
16:10And that's very important in the colored stone market because stones of this beauty are pretty unusual.
16:16And when we determine a sapphire, we do talk about country of origin.
16:22One of the things that we can't do here is do that.
16:25Okay.
16:26The stone would have to go to a laboratory.
16:28What we think, though, from looking at this color and the shape and just everything about it,
16:33it's probably a sapphire from Burma.
16:36And those are quite desirable.
16:39At auction, I would estimate the ring at $15,000 to $20,000.
16:43Wonderful. Great. Thank you so much.
16:45Oh, thank you.
16:46I appreciate it.
16:47Do you wear it?
16:47No, but I will be now.
16:49You better.
16:49Yeah, I will.
16:54Well, my husband and I took an art class at the University of Missouri when we were in college.
17:00And I fell in love with one of the artists, and it was Miro.
17:05And not too long after that, we went to an estate sale, and this was on the wall.
17:11And I'm like, wow, it was $8.
17:14And I had to borrow it from my father because we didn't have it with us.
17:18Okay.
17:19So that's how we bought it.
17:21And then we tried to figure out if it was real or not.
17:25We went to the art museum, and she said, well, I'll give you the name of a dealer in New
17:32York City.
17:32And the dealer turned out to be Pierre Matisse, Henri Matisse's son.
17:38And he had a shop in New York, and he did all of the, I guess, everything for the Miro
17:44line.
17:45And we wrote to him, and he said, looks like it's real.
17:49Okay.
17:50And then a few weeks later, he said, but you need to send me the original.
17:54And we sent it, and he said, no, I'm not so sure it's real.
17:59Okay.
18:00Would you like me to check with the artist?
18:03And, you know, I'm like, oh, that sounds like a good choice.
18:06Sure.
18:06Yeah, sure.
18:07Go ahead and check with the artist.
18:09So Miro lives in Spain, and Matisse was going to visit him.
18:14And he took the picture, and the artist said, yeah, I did it.
18:18So it took about a year for all the paperwork.
18:21But I'm thrilled to have it.
18:24And what year was that?
18:26I think we bought it at the house sale in 1971.
18:30Okay.
18:30And he started corresponding with the gallery in 72, and got the final letter in 73.
18:39Mm-hmm.
18:40This work is a pencil-on-paper drawing by Joao Moreau.
18:45He was born in 1893.
18:48He's a very interesting character in modern art, and especially in 20th century art.
18:53By 1920, he already is meeting Picasso in Paris.
18:56And from there, Moreau seemingly is part of not every major art movement, but a lot of them.
19:04Really an artist who mastered every medium, from sculpture to drawing to painting and to prints.
19:12So in this particular case, he says here in the note, it is possibly an idea for a lithograph,
19:21which I intended to do, done at the printers.
19:25And I think that, date-wise, his real deep dive into lithography starts in the late 50s.
19:33Late 50s.
19:35And then proceeds really throughout his career.
19:37But given that you acquired it by 71, I would say we can pretty safely say this was likely done
19:44in the 1960s.
19:46I think that an insurance evaluation would be $35,000.
19:52Whoa.
19:55That's wonderful.
19:56That's more than I thought it would have been.
19:59Yeah, pretty good for $8.
20:01Yeah, for $8.
20:04$8.
20:07About 270 animals live in the deer park.
20:11American bison are among the group.
20:13We currently have an impressive bison herd of 13.
20:17We have 11 female and 2 males, trying to make sure that we can produce as many young bison as
20:23we can.
20:24Grant's Farm has always had iconic animals like bison, and they're really one of the more impressive bovine species that
20:31we have.
20:32So our guests get to drive through and see them just off the road as part of their welcoming experience
20:36to Grant's Farm
20:37before they experience the rest of Grant's Farm.
20:39Bison, also commonly known as American buffalo, are native to North America.
20:46Wild bison may live for 15 years.
20:49In captivity, bison may live as long as 25 years.
20:56I brought in a letter from George Washington, and it is addressed to Edward Rutledge.
21:02Okay.
21:03My grandmother somehow got this, and we don't know where or how she got it.
21:08She sold real estate, and she sold antiques.
21:12Oh, wow.
21:12So working at the antique store, she might have had opportunity to get this.
21:17Really?
21:17And I have no idea if it's actually real or is it a forgery.
21:23Right.
21:23So there were a few things on this letter that really caught my eye.
21:26First of all, the date.
21:27It says September 1799, and that is actually several months prior to Washington's death.
21:35The other part of this is that the letter is talking about these gun carriages and is thanking
21:42Rutledge for his support.
21:44George Washington and Rutledge had a wonderful relationship, mutual respect and admiration.
21:50So, of course, Rutledge, being the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence, was
21:56a founding father right along with Washington.
21:58He then runs for South Carolina governor, and he is now currently governor when this
22:05letter is dated.
22:07Toward the bottom, you can see that this is to his good friend, and it is also then signed
22:13by George Washington.
22:15Now, we're not authenticators.
22:17However, I did talk with three or four of my colleagues.
22:21Wow.
22:22We also looked at this under a loop just to make sure that this wasn't a printed document
22:26and to make sure that the ink and the paper are of the time period, because those are
22:32all the telltale signs.
22:33That's what we look for.
22:35What I can tell you is that we do believe that this is an authentic letter, that this
22:41is an authentic signature.
22:45The real value here is in the letter.
22:47The other two images on either side, they're nice, but they don't really add as much.
22:52So, the auction estimate for the letter would be $15,000 to $20,000 on this piece.
23:00Wonderful.
23:01That's just wonderful.
23:02Wow.
23:02And to say it's probably authentic.
23:13It's hard to say where I got it.
23:15It was at least 30 years ago.
23:18I go to estate sales.
23:20Sometimes I bought items in boxes or just a whole bunch of stuff on a table.
23:25But I saw that was special to some degree, so I kept her.
23:30We know this artist.
23:32Definitely is by Andrew Clemens, who was from McGregor, Iowa.
23:38And he had a disease as a child that caused him to lose his hearing.
23:45So, he went to the Iowa School for the Deaf and probably learned the basics of doing something
23:54like this there.
23:56But he took it to another level.
23:58And he's become very well-known, much more well-known than he was in his lifetime.
24:06He only lived to 37, born 1857, died in 1894.
24:12Most of the time, he put pre-printed labels on the bottom of them.
24:17And it probably had a paper label on it at one time.
24:22He perfected the art of harvesting the limestone off the walls near the Mississippi.
24:30Amazing.
24:31And he and his brother would pick things for certain colors,
24:35and then they would grind them up to a fine powder.
24:39And every bit of that is done by compaction.
24:42He did these in different sizes in pharmacy or apothecary bottles.
24:47This is the smallest size.
24:49He did them up to about 10 inches.
24:52And you could actually order one that had your name on it or a date.
24:59Or he put eagles and locomotives and all kinds of stuff on there.
25:04But what makes this an Andrew Clemons bottle?
25:07First of all, it's the precision.
25:11To me...
25:12It's amazing.
25:13Yeah, some of the bottles...
25:14I can't even imagine how he could do that.
25:16Well, and that's why people love him so much.
25:20He would pack it in there so tight with so much great detail.
25:24He even shipped them.
25:25This geometric stuff like you see along the bottom and the top and the flowers were one of the things
25:33that he started doing pretty early on.
25:35I think the cool thing about this is the sailing scene.
25:39Oh, that is neat.
25:40And we know that this one is probably from the 1880s because by that time, he had developed the technique
25:47of doing these nice floral scenes and the scene with his little sailing boats on the back of it.
25:54I've talked to my buddies at the folk art table, and we're very comfortable with this being in a retail
26:00range of $25,000 to $30,000.
26:05I'm thinking again about that sailing.
26:07No, I'm not.
26:09Maybe.
26:10That's a lot of money.
26:12That's great.
26:20Well, it's an old carnival game.
26:23Looks like it might have used to have like a pellet or something, but it's made you push in the
26:28plunger.
26:28The doors fly open, and then this old fellow gets a spanky.
26:42My grandparents lived in the country.
26:44They lived near a railroad track, and hobos used to come, and they would feed them.
26:51So one of the hobos took a lock of their hair and left and came back with this picture for
27:00them.
27:01So this is all family hair.
27:03And where did they live?
27:05Where was this farm?
27:06Belleville, Illinois.
27:07There's a lot of hair in this.
27:10Yes.
27:11And there's also personal photographs.
27:13Yes.
27:13So when did this come into your life?
27:15It came into my life 37 years ago from my grandmother.
27:19It's kind of a little bizarre, and some people think they're a little creepy.
27:24Yes.
27:24But they're done in the style of these late 19th century memorials that were done earlier in that century.
27:33There are watercolors, and there are a lot of needleworks.
27:37And the quintessential piece is typically the Weeping Willow.
27:41Oh, wow.
27:42Okay.
27:42And we see this in watercolors.
27:44We see it in needlework.
27:46I've not seen one made of hair.
27:49Really?
27:49Yeah.
27:50I do not recognize the artist's hand.
27:52I don't know of any other piece that's similar to this.
27:56So you might say the artist did this, and it's one and done.
28:00These are pictures of your relatives?
28:02Yes.
28:02Okay.
28:03So they would have been cut out of a cabinet card.
28:07Okay.
28:08And the cabinet card was 19th century photography, and they were done typically in studios.
28:14And especially the one next to the monument is the husband and wife, and then you have the wife, and
28:22then you have another family member.
28:24Do you know who they are?
28:25I do not.
28:26But I know it wasn't my grandparents, so it could have possibly been their parents.
28:33We have this hair that is used everywhere, along with what I'm thinking is pressed felt.
28:40It's on the fence on the bottom, and it's on the monuments, and everything is mounted to a ribbed paper.
28:49So this is late 19th century.
28:52Okay.
28:52And I think in a really good retail setting, I would put a value on it of $5,000.
28:59$5,000?
29:00$5,000.
29:01Okay, thank you.
29:01And if you're insuring it, I would put a value on it of $7,500.
29:07Okay, thank you.
29:08You're not going to find another one.
29:09Yes.
29:15This is a print from Annie Albers, Bauhausen Black Mountain artist.
29:20I got it from a gallery in 2005, 2006.
29:24I'd always been kind of collecting smaller scale art, and this was the first thing of, I guess, notability that
29:30I purchased.
29:31And could you give us an idea of what you may have paid at the time?
29:34I want to say approximately $2,500.
29:37I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, which is in the shadow of Black Mountain.
29:40And so I've always been fascinated with all the artists there, from Annie Albers to her husband, Joseph Albers, and
29:46Rauschenberg, and the other artists that were in that community.
29:49Annie Albers was born in Berlin in 1899, and she studied at the Bauhaus starting in 1922.
29:56She mostly studied weaving while she was there, and then ultimately became part of their faculty in 1929.
30:03She did come to the United States with her husband, Joseph Albers, who also is a very well-known 20th
30:10century artist, and they founded the art department at Black Mountain College.
30:14I believe that was in 1933.
30:16She really was known for design at the start.
30:19She was actually the first designer to receive a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and that was
30:28in 1949.
30:28By 1963, I believe, she was moving almost exclusively to printmaking, so she really delved into screen prints, and this
30:38is a screen print on paper.
30:39We do have a signature and a date in the lower right, Annie Albers, 1968.
30:45This is 26 of 50, and there's an A just before that.
30:49I actually believe A is the title of this work.
30:52She's become one of the most important women artists of the 20th century, one of the most important artists of
30:57the 20th century.
30:58She's absolutely one of my favorites.
31:01Her work has become quite desirable.
31:03I would say her market has taken off quite a bit since you purchased this work.
31:07Her works are quite rare.
31:08This is only an edition of 50, so there's not a lot of them out there.
31:12So given all of that, I would give a current auction estimate on this screen print at 6,000 to
31:188,000.
31:19Oh, cool.
31:20That's awesome.
31:21I would recommend an insurance value of $10,000.
31:24Awesome.
31:24That's great.
31:29I can tell you that I have no idea what this is, but he's really heavy, and I think he's
31:34cute, but we call him Red Man.
31:37I got him at the Goodwill, $3.99.
31:46It's a 1915 sterling silver trophy that the St. Louis Typos won in Philadelphia.
31:54It was this trash can in his office.
31:58How did you come to own it?
31:59My father had it, and when I went off to college, he took the trash can and put it in
32:05his window to sell.
32:06It must have sat there for about four years, and then in 1978, somebody came in that offered him $50
32:13for it.
32:13And my dad looked at me and said, well, Gary, that's your trash can.
32:16You want to sell it?
32:17And so I kept saying no after $50 increments, and the guy went up to $250.
32:24And when the guy left in a hub, he says, Gary, why didn't you want to sell it for $250?
32:30And I said, well, because I think it might be sterling silver.
32:31It is a sterling silver trophy, you are correct, but it's a fun piece because it has a lot going
32:37on for it.
32:38In addition to just being a very large piece of presentation silver, it has crossover appeal.
32:44It's not a piece where the person that's buying this is going to be looking for a perfect condition piece.
32:48They're more interested in the history that it represents.
32:51Most people have never heard of the Union Printers National Baseball League.
32:55So they were originally established in 1908 with eight different teams,
32:59and within a couple of decades, they had grown to a peak of about 12 teams.
33:03And these guys were all card-carrying Union typesetters in the printing trade.
33:09Finally, the league kind of dissolved naturally in the early 21st century.
33:14Typesetting is no longer really a widespread career.
33:18Technology took over.
33:20In 1915, it was won by the St. Louis Typos.
33:24Right.
33:25Loved their name that they were comical enough to choose the typos.
33:28So a great piece of presentation silver.
33:31You can see there's some markings on the underside.
33:35Yes.
33:36It's marked here, sterling.
33:3912 pints, which is the size.
33:41And then it's marked for the retailer, who is J.E. Caldwell, out of Philadelphia,
33:45which makes sense on account of this tournament was played in Philadelphia.
33:49J.E. Caldwell could be seen as the premier jeweler of the time.
33:52So this is something that would have been retailed by them.
33:55Can you tell me about what that Sharpie notation was?
33:57Yeah, so when I went to take it to get to the local pawn shop, they weighed it.
34:04And so they gave it to me in pennyweight and Troy ounces, and I just Sharpied it on there.
34:09And I haven't been polishing it, but last December I had a polish, but the polisher left that on there.
34:16Got it.
34:17Well, I think polishing was a great choice.
34:19It's not a piece where polishing is going to hurt it.
34:21So at one point, you were offered $250.
34:23So the big question is, what is it worth now?
34:27Exactly.
34:27As a base value, just the silver alone, with silver prices currently at about $30 an ounce,
34:33it's about $1,500 in silver.
34:35Right.
34:35And then the question is, how much of a premium does an early piece of American baseball history add to
34:41it?
34:41Granted, a not very well-known one, but an important piece of early American baseball history.
34:46And I feel confident that if it came to auction, we would expect it to do $2,000 to $3
34:50,000 at minimum.
34:52Great.
34:52Okay.
34:53Yeah.
34:53That's better than I thought.
35:02This is a picture of the Three Stooges, Mowler and Shemp.
35:06I bought this in an estate sale about a year ago.
35:08It was literally one of the first estate sales I ever went to.
35:11I just am a Three Stooges fan since the day I was born.
35:14I paid only $2 for it.
35:16Wow.
35:17And it came in a brown frame.
35:19And later that night, my wife had another picture that she wanted to use the brown frame for.
35:25So I took the Three Stooges picture out of the frame and then on the back found the autographs of
35:32the Three Stooges.
35:33That's amazing.
35:34So when you originally bought it, you had no idea that it was signed.
35:38Right.
35:39I couldn't believe it.
35:40If my wife had not asked for the frame, it would have sat in the frame and I would have
35:44put it somewhere in the house or in the basement even and never would have looked at it.
35:49The photograph itself is a really nice photograph.
35:51It's an original 8x10 publicity still.
35:54It's Mowler and Shemp.
35:56But what I love about it is the signatures really take it to a very much higher level in terms
36:04of its value.
36:05I've noticed that we do have a little mark on the right-hand side.
36:11It's a sign of its being authenticated.
36:13Yep.
36:13You'll notice that Mow wrote most of it and then Larry and Shemp wrote the rest in pencil.
36:19I'm like, that seems kind of odd.
36:20Wouldn't they all be holding a pen?
36:22And I'm like, well, I'll get it authenticated.
36:25And I drove over a baseball card show and took it in.
36:28And three hours later, they came back and said, yep, these three signatures are the Three Stooges.
36:32And even though it's not curly, and I know most people are curly fans, believe it or not, my daughter
36:37and I are actually more Shemp fans.
36:40Oh, that's fantastic.
36:41So it even is better, you know, that there are Shemp fans.
36:44So it worked out perfectly for you because you got the perfect trio because there were six individuals who played
36:49in the Three Stooges over the years, only three courts at any one time.
36:52But that's amazing that you managed to get the three signatures of the three that you favored the most.
36:57They're very hard to find, the autographs.
36:59So it's a very desirable piece.
37:02In terms of value, have you had any, do you have any inkling of what it could be worth?
37:07I know you only paid $2 for it.
37:08Yeah, I was guessing between $500 and $800 maybe since it is old.
37:13I have never seen a picture like this of them before.
37:16I would expect this conservatively to be worth between $1,500 to $2,000 at auction.
37:22It's a very desirable piece.
37:24Okay.
37:25Now, if it was signed on the front, those types of photographs signed on the front by the Three Stooges
37:32have sold in the realm of around $3,000 or $4,000.
37:36So it's not worth as much as one that's signed on the front, but it's still such a fantastic piece.
37:41And what an amazing find.
37:43I assume if it was signed on the front, it would have never ended up in my hands.
37:47And so this is, yeah, this is just, it's, to me, it's priceless.
37:54It's a Westinghouse Nikolai Tesla fan from the late 1800s.
38:01I bought it in a state sale, $450.
38:04Does it keep you cool?
38:06Oh, yeah.
38:06Does it chop off fingers?
38:08It would.
38:13When my grandmother passed away, we found it in her belongings, and nobody knew anything about it, but I thought
38:20it was beautiful, so I said, I'll take that.
38:23We think it's a cocktail shaker, because there's, like, a strainer at this part.
38:28Other people said urn, but we're going to go with cocktail shaker.
38:31This is a cocktail shaker made in India.
38:35Oh, wow.
38:37Would have been very fashionable then, and actually is pretty fashionable now.
38:41And what did they do to make something look Indian?
38:43They did this kind of wonderful engraved design, and they made it gold, so it is going to be appealing.
38:50Everyone that came to your grandmother's is going to go, is it solid gold?
38:53Oh, my gosh.
38:54Right.
38:54But we know it's not, because we open it, and what do we see?
38:58Right.
38:58It's tin.
38:59Again, it's an inexpensive kind of thing that looks really, really good, and that was purposeful, so that they could
39:08export lots of them.
39:09It would look great in a low-light interior.
39:12It's got a function, so what do you think it's worth?
39:15I have absolutely no idea.
39:18Well, I think it's worth probably about somewhere between $50 and $100 at auction.
39:23Okay, that's great.
39:24That's great.
39:24Yeah, terrific item, and what a great association with your elegant grandmother.
39:29Exactly.
39:29Thank you so much.
39:31It's a good memory.
39:33Well, I think it's a Navajo blanket, and I grew up in a small town in southern Missouri, Eminence, and
39:38there was a lady there who was also interested in Native American things.
39:42And she had this, and I admired it for a while, and at some point, for a birthday or Christmas
39:47or something, she gave it to me as a gift.
39:49Look, this is a Navajo blanket, and it's an exceptionally great Navajo blanket because it's a classic woman's wearing blanket.
39:58This wouldn't have been something for special occasions, ceremonials, for gatherings, when they traveled, when they met and greeted people,
40:07when they had people coming, visitors.
40:09This would have represented the prowess of a great Navajo leaver and the stature of a Navajo woman that this
40:17would have adorned.
40:18It's also, to make it more interesting, is it's a chief's blanket style, which is a second phase, and so
40:25we have these little quadrants and bars, and then we have these kind of chevrons elements in here as well.
40:33What I really like about it is the history of weaving and all of the elements that come into this
40:39blanket.
40:39So, this great color is indigo.
40:42It's like what makes a Navajo blanket even more desirable.
40:46And then the red, the red is actually a raveled bailleta from an old blanket, and then it's dyed again
40:53with cochineal, which is actually from a beetle.
40:57And it creates a red, but it has just a subtle nuance of almost purple to it, that really nice
41:03hue.
41:04The gray is like, how do we get gray wool?
41:07Well, they're carding brown wool in with the white, and it gets this really wonderful intermediate gray.
41:15Okay.
41:15You get these great stripes, these larger quadrants of thicker bands, and then you get the spacings.
41:23You get rhythms happening throughout the weaving.
41:25This blanket is woven in about 1860 to 1870, and it looks like it's maybe been cleaned,
41:33and we have some condition issues with what's called the selvedge, the edge that goes all the way around the
41:39perimeter.
41:39But it's all here.
41:41There's a few little areas where maybe it's seen a little more wear than normal.
41:45But again, this was a blanket that someone used, so it survived all of this time.
41:50Have you ever talked to anybody about having a praise before?
41:54No.
41:55Okay.
41:56It's a really good, rare example of a Navajo woman's or even a young girl's wearing blanket.
42:05And a blanket from this period probably is worth a retail, and this is an as-is price, between $20
42:13,000 and $25,000.
42:16I had no idea, huh, that's great.
42:21I had no idea it was that old.
42:22I thought they'd be 1900, something like that.
42:25Sure.
42:25Older than that.
42:26It just goes back a ways.
42:32My grandfather was August A. Bush Sr., and he built this house in 1910.
42:39And before he built this house, he built the Bauernhof, which is where he had his stables and his carriage
42:45house.
42:46So he was a farmer.
42:48He was basically an early environmentalist.
42:51He really cared about the land, the trees, the water, the soil.
42:56Well, this house, we always called it the big house.
42:59Seven of us grew up in this house, and with my father, August Bush Jr., and my mother, mom and
43:06dad entertained a lot of people here, including presidents.
43:09We really just enjoyed it as kids, just running around and having a good time.
43:15No one lives in the house now, but we do use it for special occasions.
43:21I brought a felted wool beret and clutch that was my great aunt's.
43:29She traveled quite extensively, and so much so that her nephews all called her Aunt Weiwei because she was away
43:38all the time.
43:39I was really excited when you brought these to the table, probably very visibly so, because it's a brand that's
43:47pretty near and dear to my own heart.
43:48Okay.
43:49It's an Italian company.
43:50They were called Lenci, or the full name was Ars Lenci, as in Ars Latin for art.
43:55Lenci opens as a business in 1919 in Turin.
43:59It is a family-owned business, and they actually specialize in felt-painted dolls, and they're wildly popular.
44:07Everyone is collecting them, and they continue to collect them pretty much until the business closes in 2002.
44:13What people don't know, outside of the doll world, I would say, is that for a very brief window in
44:18the 20s and 30s,
44:20they were also producing ceramics, very high-end ceramics, and fashion.
44:25Fashion and accessories for mothers and daughters.
44:28Okay.
44:29And that is what we have here.
44:30As you said, it is felted wool, and these are pieced in a very particular way, very beautifully, in a
44:38sort of quilted manner, even,
44:39in terms of the way that they are pieced.
44:42You can see a little better on the interior just how they're made.
44:47They had shops in other areas of Europe, as well as also being retailed and distributed by department stores in
44:55America.
44:55Oh.
44:56And one of the big publications that talked about ours, Lenchi, a lot in the 20s and early 30s was
45:02Women's Wear Daily.
45:03Oh.
45:03So, American New York fashion magazine.
45:06Lenchi had just begun this production about 1927.
45:09So, Women's Wear Daily had a write-up in one issue talking about how Lenchi was one of the two
45:15most important fashion houses currently making great garments for women.
45:18I've seen some of the hats before.
45:21They do come up occasionally.
45:22What I've never seen before is a matching bag.
45:25Okay.
45:25I think by about the mid-1930s, they had completely stopped making anything of this sort.
45:30So, I could see that, even with the push of Women's Wear Daily, it wasn't enough to keep this side
45:36of the business going.
45:37I would say, conservatively, in a retail setting, to have both the hat and the matching clutch, you're probably looking
45:44at about $3,000 to $3,500.
45:47Oh, my goodness.
45:50Yeah, wait, wait.
45:51She saved my grandparents during the Depression.
45:56She and her sister helped them when they had a young family.
45:59And so, that's awesome.
46:01Oh, my gosh.
46:02That's awesome.
46:03I wish I had known her.
46:05I'm sure she had a lot of tales to tell.
46:12So, this is an advertisement for Clark's Rye, which was a distillery in Peoria, Illinois, pre-Prohibition.
46:21And this was one of their marketing pieces that they did.
46:24It's called the Old Codger.
46:31They belong to my dad first, but he's passed away in 2018.
46:35And we came across him cleaning out a storage unit.
46:38One of the last boxes we opened is like, oh, my gosh, here's some baseball cards.
46:42What do you know about how he obtained these?
46:44Well, in 1933, Bill would have been about 12 years old, and I could see him collecting these cards.
46:50He had the scrapbook, and so he had every slot numbered.
46:54There's 239 cards in this set.
46:56Some of them are a little wrinkled, so I could see him actually have one in his back pocket, bringing
47:02it to school to trade,
47:04you know, with his buddies or something.
47:06I'm shaking, not because I'm nervous, but because I'm so excited to talk about these today.
47:12The Gowdy Gum Company, founded in 1919 by Enos Gordon Gowdy, was strictly a gum company.
47:18That was their business was chewing gum.
47:20So, Enos Gordon Gowdy retires in 1932.
47:24He stays with the company as a consultant.
47:27And then in 1933, they decide to do this idea of combining a baseball card with a stick of chewing
47:34gum,
47:35using the baseball card as a way to encourage people to buy their gum.
47:39And out of this idea, they end up creating one of the most revolutionary sets of cards in the history
47:46of collecting.
47:47They took it to a whole new level when you look at the aesthetics on these cards.
47:51The vibrant colors, the quality of the printing, far surpassed anything that had been done previously.
47:57And nearly every card in the set is considered a rookie card.
48:00Right.
48:01Everything done previously to that was either in tobacco or was in candy.
48:05And most cards before this were just regional.
48:08The packs were one cent, and you got one card.
48:12Oh, boy.
48:13That's it.
48:14So, the set had a checklist for 240 cards.
48:17Right.
48:18However, we see in the first sheet here, the card number 106 is not there.
48:22Right.
48:23What they did as a marketing ploy is they didn't actually print card 106 so that people would continue buying
48:28more packs chasing this card 106.
48:32Got it.
48:32They had so many complaints about people not being able to put together the set that people actually started writing
48:37off to the company, to Gaudi.
48:39And so, in 1934, they actually then printed card 106.
48:44They're extremely hard to find.
48:45So, whether you have 239 cards or 240 cards, they're both considered a complete set.
48:52Right.
48:52Because these have been housed in a scrapbook album like this for so many years, the color is fantastic.
48:59The second thing I looked at were the tabs.
49:01Okay.
49:01Okay?
49:01So, good news is we look at the Babe Ruth here, top center.
49:05It's just slid in those little corners.
49:07No issues whatsoever.
49:09Okay.
49:09But then I had to look at the heart-shaped tabs.
49:11And we've actually folded back a couple of those heart-shaped tabs.
49:14The great news is the glue has dried out, and those little corners just fold right back.
49:19Okay.
49:19For the card to slide out.
49:21Most of your key cards in here are actually in the best condition of all of them in here.
49:26Okay.
49:27To have a complete set typically is something that's done by a collector who has the budget to go out
49:34and seek each card individually.
49:35I don't think I've ever seen a set that was ever discovered that was assembled like this in 1933.
49:41Talking about the individual cards, the Lou Gehrig has a little bit of a centering issue on the left.
49:46But, again, the color is as good as you could ask for.
49:50It just has the little corners.
49:51It's going to come right out of that.
49:53That one, I expect at auction, would sell for $5,000 to $7,500.
49:59Mm-hmm.
50:00The Babe Ruth, it's in very good condition.
50:03That one's going to sell at auction for $20,000 to $30,000.
50:07Okay.
50:08So, the infamous card 106, that was Napoleon Lajoie, Hall of Fame's second baseman who retired in 1916.
50:17Currently, if somebody was to want to add the card 106 to this set to make it that $240 of
50:22$240, in very good condition, similar to these, you're looking at like $50,000.
50:28Just to get that card?
50:29Just to add card 106 to this set.
50:31Okay.
50:32I've inspected every page condition-wise to see where we're at, and this set at auction, I would expect to
50:38sell for $110,000 to $130,000.
50:42All right.
50:44Awesome.
50:46I'm so happy.
50:47And I would say, for insurance purposes, $150,000.
50:51Okay.
50:51Okay.
50:52Awesome.
50:54And now, it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
50:59We're here today with our antique pickle jar, which we found out was from the 1800s, so the late 1800s.
51:06I paid $50 for it and found out it's worth between $80 and $100, so I got a pretty good
51:13dill pickle.
51:15A plastic piece.
51:16And we're celebrating Dixie's 99th birthday, which will be next Tuesday.
51:23This is my beautiful statue that I just obtained a few months ago, a little gift to myself.
51:31Got her for around $200.
51:33She's worth between $5,000 and $1,000.
51:35That's going to buy a lot of diapers.
51:37Thank you so much, Antiques Roadshow.
51:40We brung a Picasso.
51:41We thought we was going to become his millionaires.
51:43We thought the Picasso was worth a lot, but it was worth?
51:46Not a lot.
51:48But it was a?
51:49It was worth a potato, not a Picasso.
51:52We came to Antiques Roadshow today.
51:54This is a plate that was given to my grandmother by a secret admirer, and we never knew anything about
51:59it.
51:59But today, I learned it's from about 1910.
52:02No real value, but I'm just happy to have learned something about it.
52:06And I brought something, and I don't know what it is.
52:10But if you get your finger caught in it, it really hurt.
52:13Nobody else in here knows what it was either.
52:16I love the Antiques Roadshow.
52:18Thanks for watching.
52:19See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
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