amber wondered what happened to some of Antiques Roadshow favorite treasures after our cameras left town when we first saw you my heart started going like this soul find out in this 500th episode special extraordinary Pines [Music] Antiques Roadshow has made some incredible discoveries over our 24 seasons on the road there's like one of four known in America you have one of them from our first ever tag sale triumphant Secaucus the lady was asking $30 she said you couldn't you can have it to a touching national treasure in Tucson when you walked in with this I just about died I can't believe this and lots in between this is one incredible watch my gosh in this special episode Antiques Roadshow reconnects with experts we just couldn't believe it here we are with an absolute masterpiece and owners to this day I can't really comprehend that much money for a screen to check in on some of our most extraordinary finds when Antiques Roadshow first started traveling the country most of us had no idea a single piece of furniture could be worth six figures or more we and Leslie Kino are still relative unknowns as well but luckily they turned up to educate us all about the value of one delicate and dirty card table we found in Secaucus shows 1997 and there we were in Secaucus New Jersey and it's the last place that I would expect to see what we what we saw upside down and a car being rolled in by a lady a schoolteacher from New Jersey named Claire I went to a garage sale how long ago was this about 30 years ago we moved into our new house I needed a diminutive table and I thought I think I know the shape and size she had Gahan did one day when she was antiquing with a friend the friend actually said you know don't buy that it's so wobbly it won't hold the land so she was actually considering not buying it when I saw this out in the yard I thought this is a great thing it was pitch black it was a moldy mess and the lady was asking $30 so but I only have 25 I said that's all I have she said you can you can have it I took it what you brought in today here is a federal inlay mahogany demi loom card table made by John and Thomas Seymour very distinguished cabinet makers who made some of the most distinguished and fine furniture for the very wealthiest families embossed at the time we're very fortunate you are in fact to have the actual label yes John Seymour and son there was John Seymour and Sun Creek Square Boston and that's all we needed to see other guys we just we just looked at each other we just couldn't believe it here we are with an absolute masterpiece I mean one of the greatest pieces of federal furniture I've ever seen this table everything about it even if it didn't have the label says John and Thomas Seymour the quality is incredible aha did you try to clean it at any point linseed oil and turpentine I didn't even I didn't refinish it I wiped it off and then I saw this and I took the dirt off well Claire luckily you weren't a really great refinisher because if you were no I'm joking she kind of looked at me like what do you mean I'm not a good cleaner you know it's a you know and I said well it's because because you didn't take all the grunge oh so you cleaned it a lot more you would have taken a lot off the value I figured how can we it still has a nice old color see all that all the dirt down at the aisle of that yeah I just want to say when you when we first saw you my heart started going like this feel it you can feel it right now Lesley looked over and said Lee is that what I think it is and as we got closer you had this upside down we saw that stable label and I last went up to the label the win and he said it isn't is it and I said so it's really one of the most exciting moments I've ever had Plus yeah now do you have an idea what it's worth are you getting some idea Oh probably 20,000 now I just said you think the estimate we're gonna give you is gonna top that I think Wes and I both feel that this piece in the open market place on a good day would be in the range of about two hundred to two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars on a very good day with everything in place it has the possibility of bringing three hundred thousand I don't want to get your hopes up that much but 225 isn't bad I guess right yeah Claire's mouth I mean it was just this like it was it was it was priceless a really good policy and the roadshow is it is it of course we don't exchange business information with the person whose item we've just appraised and we said goodbye declare that day and I never thought I'd see her again really I think was within weeks after the appraisal she actually looked up my brother's number and called them at Sotheby's and then the table what the option I remember that day Wow it was January of 1998 lot number fourteen hundred and forty the federal mahogany card table labeled by John Seymour and son I was sitting in the front row and the roadshow cameras were to the far left and Clair was also in the front row way to the left and there's pretty much every collector of American furniture in the audience that day so the feeling was one of excitement the bidding started and it started at 200 220 240 260 280 300 and once it got to 300 it was I remember just looking down at Claire and she's already just justice she had that look on her face like she did at the roadshow but the number kept going up four hundred thousand more than ten more than twenty thirty one forty more than 50 more than 60 more than 84 to 90,000 at $490,000 and still on the right side and down echoes where you called it at four hundred and ninety thousand dollars the buyers premium in other words that the BP is the amount added on by the auction house to the hammer price and it's paid for by the buyer including the BP the selling price ended up being five hundred and forty-one thousand dollars which was a world record for federal furniture at the time so it's 21 years later so what's it worth today it's it's a tough question because the very very best of American furniture has has kept its value more than the middle level stuff and the brown wood has gone down the thing about this car table is that because it's rare because it's labeled because it has an original finish because it was made by probably the greatest federal furniture makers in New England at the time is it worth three hundred fifty thousand you know there were three hundred thousand and I think that is someone that would they would take but 550 and now to a story about twins of a different kind folk art fanatic Alan Katz reveals he is the owner of a mate to the adorable child Swan sleigh we appraised in Milwaukee in season 11 this story about the Swan sled is really a story of what are the odds here we are in my home this is one of the cornerstones of our collection and it is the mate to the one that was brought into Milwaukee to be appraised by this lovely lady I got it at a rummage sale about seven years ago and I paid about $35 for it what we have here is a child sled thirty years ago we would have said it's unique but about 20 years ago another sled same form surfaced it was literally surreal and we get too emotional here but it was literally a surreal experience that this could possibly be happening when it comes to any appraiser in any category you absorb ten fifteen twenty things instantly it's called blinking and you take in all these these objects so you look at the swan sled and having lived with it for as long as I did prior to the Milwaukee show I know how the feathers are carved I know the unmistakable metal brace that's brought up the side of the wing same exact curved metal that's in the other sled this indentation here the way the wing is scooped out to give it dimension those things are identical after that it's click-click-click everything just falls into place we don't know who the maker is but we know it's by the same maker I bought this in the mid 80s and at that time I was single and I was known for really paying a strong price because I wanted people to bring me things I wanted to see a lot I wanted to touch a lot it was part of my learning process or dealer who knew me purchased this from a dealer from Texas to the best of my knowledge he paid 5,000 as for this sled he came back to Connecticut and he put a price on this that was very hard to take it was $40,000 and I paid it it was a choke price but I didn't regret it I've never regretted it it's the way the collecting world the art world works because you're willing to pay it you write the track had I had a wife and a bunch of kids I'm not sure that this one sled would be here right now I would value it at somewhere around 20 to $30,000 my gosh just cry if you have no idea it's a wonderful wonderful object so I just thank you today for bringing it into Antiques Roadshow insuring it well thank you so much I just never had an idea would be anything like that I would never ever even consider selling it I mean this is something out passed down to my grandchildren flash-forward a couple of months and she did reach out to me as sometimes that does happen and she asked me to give her an insurance letter which I did supplied to her and then we really had no communication till after the episode aired and I find that to be the case sometimes that the guests they do like to have it in their possession when the episode actually airs and have people over family over watching this episode and then there seems to be a release that when you have something of this value and the money could be put to good use that we might explore selling it so she did call me after the episode she said are you really serious about that price and my grandchildren are going to college and we could use some money for the college fund so would it be possible for you to represent the sled and sell it and I said absolutely I sold it to a private collector and can't disclose the exact price but it's good to say that it was north of $50,000 ours is approximately twice the size and this really resonates as a major piece of folk sculpture so in terms of trying to value our piece I would say this would be north of a hundred and it's just another great story for what folk art can do and what Roadshow has done for people just like the tale of two sleighs the Buffalo Bill Wild West set that Noah Barrett appraised in Providence of Season ten illustrates the adage that you should always buy what you love I've been with the roadshow for what's twenty four years now and it's been a long haul but it's been a lot of fun and seen a lot of great stuff I get a lot of questions one of the very very first questions is what's the best thing you found on the roadshow and I go right to Providence you've watched the Rhode show you know how excited we get when we find original boxes I've noticed yes in 2005 I saw the Antiques Roadshow was coming to Providence and I had this toy soldier set that I had bought 20 years before and I decided let me lug it down there and see what the story is with it sitting there at the table this guy walks in wooden box about this big and he opened it up and Wow what's in this box here that says Buffalo Bill I guess it was the Buffalo Bill Wild West cowboy show I bought it at an auction locally here about 21 years ago my wife was away for the weekend and I went to the auction and never been to one before in my life I ended up with this your wife wasn't with you so you could go wild if she'd have been with me I wouldn't have gone and what did you pay for it I think I paid about 400 dollars for I thought it was a lot of money but like fooling his money I had it in my pocket and I said I like it I'll just buy it and let the devil take the hindmost that was that it's made by the Heidi company Heidi was the preeminent German manufacturer mm-hmm and this is something they made around 1903 what's extraordinary is it is the large set what's doubly extraordinary is no one played with it it was almost untouched by human hands frankly I almost didn't want to go in there and touch it when you see it tied in with the little original red string and had these little paper cushions under each piece it was just unbelievable I've never seen anything like it I did some research and talked to one dealer who had sold a similar set few years back not in this condition for in the range of $14,000 this set on today's market I think at auction could bring in the neighborhood of 15 to $20,000 well when my father-in-law came in for a visit and looked at it he looked at it said what'd you pay for when I told him he made one of those faces now maybe I didn't know what I was doing 25 years ago I never take the set out of the house I have pictures of it and when I go to conventions and shows people who collect the same stuff I'll show it to them to this day it's the first thing I ever bought and it is also the best it's it's like people collect this stuff sometimes they say oh you're the guy who's got that set never been on to the box like oh yeah as far as I know there's never been another set show up at auction today they would have every expectation of it bringing at least 30 to $40,000 and under the right circumstances it could possibly go to 50 it's safe to say that guest is never parting with this precious Buffalo Bill set we've learned that most people we meet on Roadshow hold on to their treasures no matter what they're worth but not everyone in Miami in 2001 I think I was at the deck arts table and another appraiser who Carl Crossman who was at folk art and he walked across the floor and put this amazing piece of southern pottery in front of it because I know about southern pottery he and I did the spot together basically this is an alkaline glazed piece of pottery all done by hand thrown and formed by hand it's been wearing and this is a presentation piece it's a face jug when I looked at that piece of pottery I knew it was great and I wasn't sure where it was from and at that time in the early 2000s the level of scholarship in southern decorative arts was was on the rise it's got a little hat on here it's got a very bold face nice jacket western style jacket like a sea captain would have buttons little area down here and then these little buttons here which would be the gold buttons on a ship's captain's coat actually say layman and le hm in and you made some calls but we haven't been able to figure out who that is much later we found out that it was a potter named John layman from Alabama where was this jug before you brought it in it was in a box of styrofoam in a room to keep my cats from keen on it at that point I'm almost laying on the floor laughing and Carl looks like a deer caught in the headlights this is perhaps one of the most bowling molded and most stylish jugs that we've ever seen so Ken what do you think I think it's great I think it's a wonderful piece of pottery it's got lots of character and the price we're saying 25 at $35,000 Wow what'd you expect it no she writes me when I get back home and wants to an appraisal and after doing a little bit more research I found out that there was one very similar to that that was sold to a museum in Atlanta in a private sale that was around 75 or 80 thousand dollars and once she heard that she decided to sell it because obviously if the cat didn't like it she might as well get it out of the house and we we took it to Radford Virginia and sold it for eighty-three thousand dollars as far as I know it's still in the home of the person that bought it a private collector from Birmingham Alabama bought about the one we sold about five or six years ago this guy from Alabama calls me up and he has another one of these John layman what we call a face jug and he had been offered over $100,000 for it and he he asked me if I could get more money for it I said if I were you I would take their money and baked him a cake and I heard later that it was close to 125,000 I truly believe that if one of these came for sale today that's what it would probably bring in the hands of a good dealer he flipped the watch over although appraiser Paul Hart Quist was working his first ever Antiques Roadshow in season nine you could say his timing was perfect because he got the chance to find a one-of-a-kind Patek Phillipe that's still the best pocket watch he's ever held in his hands when I first opened the box to look at the Patek Phillipe it's good thing I was sitting down because my knees started to get weak and I started to shake a little bit this watch was handed down from my great-grandfather he was the owner of the st. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch back in 1914 when he received this watch that's manufactured by the Patek Phillipe company of Geneva Switzerland this is a photocopy of the original warranty depicting some of the complications of this watch the front of the watch has the hour and minute hand in the second hand it also has a split chronograph so you can time two things it also has a minute register for the chronograph when we flipped the watch over you have the day the date and the month along with the moon phase it's also a perpetual calendar which adjusts for leap year it's a very complicated watch an excellent excellent condition this watch at auction I suspect would bring close to a quarter-million dollars yes this is one incredible watch I've never held a watch like this in my hand you're gonna that is one incredible watch it can be yes No what is incredible watch I can't believe it until today is still the best watch I've ever held in my hands the owner decided to sell it we contacted Patek Phillipe they went through their archives researching the serial number and then researching similar watches that may exist I thought there would be a run of perhaps five watches however we determined that there was only one watch made that is a unique watch made by Patek Phillipe I put him in touch with Safa B's and the auction took place in 2006 in Geneva Switzerland I appraised the watch at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars Safa B's appraised it at slightly more than that I believe everyone was surprised when it brought one point five four million including the buyer's premium I'm not sure who purchased it but I do know that it is on display in the Patek Phillipe Museum we've spoken with several other watch experts and that watch today we estimate is worth at least two and possibly three million dollars roadshows appraisers are incredibly knowledgeable but they'll be the first to admit they don't know everything this is the fascinating story of how lark Mason an internationally recognized expert in Asian works of Arts learn something very surprising after the 2005 Bismarck show toward the end of the day a lady came in with a screen folded up that was not in very good condition opened it up and my jaw drops I couldn't believe what I was seeing it was extraordinary Dee I tell me about this my husband had this when we were first going together mm-hmm it didn't get in our home anymore and so we stored it and quite regretfully it got damaged and I want to know if it's worth any value or if it's something to just kind of discard and say - because it's gone now Chinese painting is done in a narrative fashion so you have the same figure represented in different poses and this is the figure of a woman named as she Wang mu she was sort of the leader of the Immortals which is this heavenly band of deities in Chinese mythology really they lived on an island called posion which is the island of the Immortals we know that it has eight panels first question I have is whether it's supposed to have more than eight or not if you look at the far side over there you see there's a cloud border at the border that's behind us here you'll see that there isn't anyone that could have afforded this screen lived in a tremendously large compound this was something that was meant for the very highest tiers of Chinese society I think that the value of this has to be in the thirty to fifty thousand dollar range as it and I I was wondering whether I should what were you wondering you're gonna do I didn't know whether it should be saved or not oh my goodness thank you we ended up speaking of the day she said I'd like to sell this I said I've got to get rid of this screen it's just sitting there and my daughter said well that's not hard and she got on her computer and she emailed him and a half-hour later Lord called we prepared it for auction promoted it to all of our Chinese clients and had it advertised everywhere and everybody is going what a terrific Chinese screen and then the auction day comes the day of the auction I was on the way to a doctor's appointment and my daughter text $60,000 and I thought wow and I'm at this appointment and my phone's keeping going Bing Bing Bing and I said my kids must be trying to figure out how they can get that money away from me and split it and after I was done I got ahold of my daughter and she says come on it's still going on people that are participating are Chinese and they they start bidding enthusiastically and then they drop out and they're supplanted by all these bidders from Korea when I got higher my son had text he was in California and he had text mom gave lark a hug at 30 to 50,000 what's she going to do now and it was just it was just a joke it passed a hundred and then it was in a race car to 200 and then 300 came in wet and then we're over four and we're going oh my gosh it kept going and ended up over five hundred forty thousand dollars and we were really puzzled why were the Korean bidders so interested in this partial screen something's we're missing something it was the realization that it was actually not incomplete it was just not a Chinese screen it was a Korean screamed and it was a Korean scream that was purposely created to copy a Chinese screen this is an important important object it really shocked be it shocked the audience of Chinese bidders who were bidding it shocked my staff and shocked at all of us were surprised I just to this day I can't really comprehend that much money for a screen particularly a moldy screen there's guns that are works of art we know ray PLL is best for his folksy enthusiasm about Civil War artifacts this is the kind when you see it you say ring-a-ding-ding baby its own but in Boston in 2012 he had the chance to appraise something even older and rarer at the end of the day this gentleman walks up with a cartridge pouch thrown over his shoulder and I look at and I thought well that's just a reproduction and he takes it off very roughly and he throws it literally throws it on the table I'm like I came in and I got to look in the one oh my goodness it is and I start talking to the guy and he has no idea what he has what I believe is a Civil War cartridge coach has a regimental number on it and I don't know if that's a New York regiment or Massachusetts or did you get it at it was in the house that my parents bought down on the Cape at the very end of World War two and there were a bunch of things in the Attic and and that's where it came from would you be surprised if I told you it's a little earlier than Civil War yeah I would be well in a century before then we had some guys come over from England and they wore red coats and if you notice in the center of the plate it's got some red I noticed that that's because this is an original Revolutionary War soldiers cartridge box no kidding and it's not 43rd New York and it's not 43rd Massachusetts history 43rd light infantry of the British soldiers from the Revolutionary War Lord on the outside of the box it had to this point the only known non excavated example of that plate and the plate says 43rd light infantry that was strictly the way the British would refer to that regiment they were not only in Boston they were at the Battle of Bunker Hill yes they were at the Battle of Lexington yes and we don't know for sure but it's quite possibly that this cartridge box that's sitting between us today was at those battles really I found out later that the box was probably made just a little bit after Bunker Hill but could have been at Yorktown and a lot of times when we do an appraisal after the fact we learn things that we didn't know we know a lot but we don't know at all I had people inform me that there were two kinds of cartridge boxes for the British they had a belly mounted cartridge box and the one that goes over the shoulder like this one is known as a cartridge pouch a lot of times over the years when we've had somebody bring in a cartridge box or cartridge pouch so if they think a Civil War it's either a reenactors piece or it's post-war and worth a lot less so usually we have to tell them not so happy news this one was wonderful because I got to tell him not only was it a lot better than what he thought it was it was spectacular there aren't enough superlatives for this box he's got the original buff leather shoulder sling the box is solid as a rock it's just flawless it's got the original closure tab still present it's got the original wooden block on the inside of it right it's got the original finial on the bottom the metal finial and finding all of those things together is like lining up all of those numbers on the lottery ticket it doesn't happen but once every so often if this was a Civil War cartridge box with the sling and everything you're talking around a thousand maybe fifteen hundred dollars if it's really pretty because a whole different ballgame with this one this one on today's market would retail for between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars my lord that's amazing it's amazing it's Revolutionary War we get done we go back over and I always make it a point to say hi to the person and to thank him for being there and he's like well that was really neat and he throws it back over his shoulder and he bee-bop's out of the room and I haven't heard a word from him I'm hoping that he's not wearing that box around the Cape somewhere today I tell the guy what I think is a conservative value I wasn't a very smart man because after the fact I realized it's the only one if you want one you have to buy that one in 2019 I think without a doubt it would bring at least fifty and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it didn't bring twice that if the right people were in the room roadshows visit to Birmingham Alabama in season nineteen saw expert Colleen vesko salute to a stunning portrait by Frederick Remington famed artist of the American West a discovery that epitomizes the phrase museum quality this man came up to the desk and he had this painting and a cardboard box and he kept pulling it up and down and I noticed that there was a foam core in front of it and every time he pulled it up I would see more and more of that magnificent sky finally I said get the painting out of that box and stop putting it back in and out of that box before you get it damaged and he did and it was more than I could have dreamed up it was a fabulous late 19th century rubbing tonight you're the first for me I've never reprimanded a guest for manhandling a painting before I'm glad you're taking care of my paintings so what can you tell me about this lovely Frederick Remington portrait well Lee that burger was my great-grandfather that is this job this is this genius and he was a friend of Frederick Remington who in 1896 painted his portrait as part of a military series in El Paso and he was captain and as you know Frederick Remington is one of the most important Western artists of the turn-of-the-century he didn't have a tremendous amount of training but a natural instinct for the vitality and the style of the west and this portrait is a terrific example of that it also comes with this letter from Remington to your great grandfather the letter was rubbing Tain's speaking to the sitter and how much he enjoyed their time together and there was a lot of meat in it which is which is really what he wants there was no anonymity to it at all it was personal for Remington and it was personal for the sitter when Remington died and I think people will be surprised that he died in his mid-forties from a appendix operation that didn't go well when he died this painting was in his home in upstate New York his home and studio in upstate New York became the Frederick Remington Museum and the family of the sitter tracked down the painting to be there and they went to the museum and said you know hey this is art this is our folk we would really love to have this painting the family came into negotiations with the group and in the late 1940s were able to get the painting now you you had this appraised a while ago correct and what was the value of that I was in 1960s and the value was $7,500 well the years have been kind to you and Frederick Remington the letter itself is worth probably about $2,000 yeah he really is an iconic figure in American painting and this piece with the very dashing figure the beautiful shadow the abstracted landscape behind it's really a wonderful example of Remington's work at the turn of the century and this piece together with the letter would be something that I would value at auction between $600,000 oh my goodness and 800,000 I was hoping I would be wildly exuberant I am and certainly for insurance at in excess of $800,000 goodness I think he knew it was valuable I think he may have been thinking around thirty thousand twenty-five thirty thousand dollars but not not that level I can only speculate that he came home told his family what it's worth and they said get it out of here because something like that is subject to any sort of mayhem in a private home and it's much safer in a museum he had the painting restored professionally restored and it's now in the Birmingham Alabama Museum for everyone to see the market has gone up for Western art and the market is still very strong for Remington and in today's market in 2019 I would value the painting between 800,000 and 1.2 million dollars if Frederick Remington is almost a household name John Lennon certainly is and collectibles expert Laura Wooley enjoyed being the bearer of good news to a shock Beatles fan in New York City in 2014 he had absolutely no idea what's happened to the market for this stuff so it was really fun for me to be able to drop a giant price bomb on Ted I bought it in in about 27 years ago how much did you pay for faith it started at bits $300 the bidding and I got it for 400 we do see that there's John Lennon and Yoko Ono signatures on it with his little face that he would draw with he and Yoko the more important thing about this piece is not just the signatures it's the fact that we have this photo of it sitting at their bed in in 1969 and they were protesting the Vietnam War and wanted peace they were gonna have the bed in in New York but because of his cannabis conviction he was allowed back in the country so they decided to go up to Montreal and during these days there they had a number of guests come they had Timothy Leary and Murray the K is one of the people that came to visit so this is the sign hanging on the wall over here saying that Murray decay comes on Monday so the cool thing about those bed end posters is they made all these wonderful things to put up on the walls behind them because they knew the press was coming but then when they took them all down he signed them all and they would put the little doodles on it and of course there's the little John Lennon and Yoko doodle on this one as well I would say at auctions conservatively given the context on this they would probably put anywhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars on it my god I'm in a state of shock that's great news thank you so much I saw your knees go out a little bit therefore remember the moment I told him the price I saw his knees buckle a little bit and he just kind of dipped and I thought man this guy's gonna hit the ground which is amazing and terrible at the same time I started in this business in 1997 at Sotheby's I mean he purchased it at Sotheby's in 1987 so it was really fun for me because this piece started at Sotheby's 10 years before I started working there but when I left that show I ran home and pulled my catalog copy of that too to confirm that everything he said was true and it was right as rain it was all right there what I noticed is that Ted was even in 1987 he was quite lucky to purchase this for $400 because this was one of I believe seven pieces that this publicist sold and they sold for three to five thousand dollars a piece but they had no photo of this in the catalog so because of the fact that no one could see what it looked like and they had to just go off if it's a piece of paper that this is what it says he picked it up for a steal I mean he really got a great deal even back then when I left the auction business I decided to really be just an appraiser I don't buy sell deal auction myself I'm happy to assist and help help people find a good place to sell but I'm not the person to help sell a piece like this in 2015 a year after we did the appraisal with Ted he decided to sell the poster at auction he reached out to Heritage Auctions as you might predict pieces like this come up so infrequently that bidding was quite active and happily this sold for seventy-five thousand dollars which I couldn't be happier for someone like Ted from a knee buckling auctioned by to the kind of fabulous family heirloom Roadshow is famous for furniture expert John solo nearly had to sit down when he found a very special chair that he says is still his favorite my very first Antiques Roadshow was in Philadelphia and I remember I was little bit nervous about doing it the whole production there's people running everywhere lots of activity in action and I'm thinking oh my goodness I'm just an old country boy I'm not sure how this is all going to work for me I look up the line and I see this lady holding this chair she's holding it like a rifle and it's kind of sticking out the end and I look at that chair and I think holy cow that's a Charles Rolf chair and a damn good one my mother found it in my grandmother's house in Dayton Ohio back in around the 1960s when they were settling up their estate it was up in the attic nobody else knew it was there do you know who did this chair having a clue I've never seen anything like it and that's why I brought it here great well let me show you on the back of the chair we have a mark and it's an R with a vertical saw that's the maker's mark for a very famous arts and crafts maker named Charles Rolf's no kidding and Charles Ross was a very eccentric man unlike a lot of the arts and crafts other makers he worked only in a studio with himself in a few apprentices he made all kinds of unusual things they really pushed the boundaries of arts and crafts the whole design is very radical it was the thought of furniture as sculpture and this cherish you can see really goes a long ways and blurring those boundaries between furniture and art did captures the essence of the Arts and Crafts movement and what it does it adds a creativity and a sense of beauty and artistic license to arts and crafts that Gustav Stickley and a lot of other people just don't have most time Charles Wolf's worked in oak this chair is mahogany what makes it very interesting also Charles Ross furniture is very rare and it's absolutely absolutely sought-after by the best collectors in America there's not much of it out there a lot of it's in institutions and and so when a great piece especially a piece that sort of virgin to the to the marketplace comes up I mean it is really big news and it's really important this chair is worth between eighty and a hundred and twenty thousand dollars at auction I am not kidding I am NOT I'm not kidding graduation is a fantastic chair there's like one of four known in America you have one of them absolutely amazing they've got several other people's opinions about value of the chair cuz I didn't want to say something too high or too low you remember what I said what did you say gotta be kidding yes I do because it was worth so much money mom's financial advisors were advising her that she should sell it he persisted and mom decided to sell it at auction I think if something's worth $500 or $1,000 there's not a burden to families but it something as valuable as Nancy's chair becomes a burden you have to worry about insurance you have to worry about locking in the front door you have to worry about who's sitting in the chair in the auction business parents wanted to avoid their children fighting over things is one of the main and honest truth main reasons that people can sign things to auction all of that was in the back of the mind of the financial advisor all of those things because a mom couldn't afford to insure something so valuable we sat through the auction and kept track of everything and we're hoping very much that they would do well they had promised to sell it for quite a lot we kept hoping would go higher aren't I awful very greedy but it it sold for a hundred and eighty thousand plus buyer's premium and put it over I guess two and a quarter which was great and we were sad to see it go mom's still living today she's 96 and so it has helped her out so in that sense it was a good thing I'd love to know who's got it and that's their policy they don't let you know the whole process was fun took us out of our normal home drum life it all started from a Saturday afternoon tea Antiques Roadshow as far as furniture goes and as far as the Antiques Roadshow goes it was certainly the best thing I have ever seen we've seen a lot of great stuff sense but that still it's my very first and my very favorite and speaking of chairs Ted said his Navajo blankets spent many years just draped over the back of one and he never even suspected it was a national treasure until that unforgettable day in 2001 when he decided to bring it to the Tucson Roadshow we found an extraordinary masterpiece that will forever be a major part of Antiques Roadshow history I recall vividly that I was standing at the table and it was actually appraising some small pre-columbian heads when I heard Don Ellis's voice behind me and he was very insistent in the way he was calling out and I said Don I'm busy I'm busy I turned around and I saw that Don was holding a striped blanket and I knew what this was I excused myself from the pre-columbian lady and I went back and and Don was literally speechless it was given by Kit Carson whoever I'm sure everybody knows in his history given to the foster father of my grandmother was a young boy 6 7 8 9 years old during the years I was living with her grandmother it was on the bed where I slept and then the cold winter days probably thrown over me well Ted did you notice when you showed this to me that I kind of stopped breathing a little bit yeah you did I'm still having a little bit of trouble breathing here today by surprise because I'd you know didn't think much about it probably a chief blanket but that's exactly what it is and it's not just a chief's blanket it's the first type of Chiefs blankets made these were made in about 1840 to 1860 and it's called a you first face a yute a yute first phase wearing blanket are you cheers wears Navajo made they were made for you Chiefs and they were very very valuable at the time this is sort of this is Navajo weaving in its purest form all of these things that we see later with diamonds and all kinds of different patterns comes much later than this this is just pure linear design this is the the beginning of Navajo weaving and not only that the condition of this is unbelievable unbelievable we see these we've got a little bit of damage over there it's made from hand-woven wool but it's so finely done it's like silk would repel water and this here is dyed with indigo dyes it was a very valuable dye at the time it's an extraordinary piece of art it's extremely rare it is the most important thing that's coming to the roadshow that I've seen do you have a sense at all of what we were looking at here in terms of our I haven't a clue are are you a wealthy man Ted no well sir I'm still a little nervous here I have to tell you on a really bad day this textile would be worth 350 thousand dollars on a good day it's about a half a million dollars you had no idea on the back of a chair well sir you have a national treasure Wow and national treasure she when you walked in with this I just about died congratulations congratulations I can't believe this now the value of this that I'm giving is not using the Kit Carson provenance provenance is sometimes very difficult to ascertain if we could do research on this and we could prove with a without a reasonable doubt that Kit Carson did actually own this the value would increase again maybe 20% Blin my grandmother you know for poor farmers they didn't she had her her foster father had started some gold mills and and you know discovered gold and everything but there's no well no wealth in the family at all congratulations thank you well I had no idea that it could be worth anything like that I thought maybe five or six thousand dollars you know at the most it might be worth it should have been big something for me at that time I knew we couldn't afford to keep it and it would be better served to be someplace where it can be preserved properly I need you to contacted Donald Ellis to see if he would be interested in in buying it he gave us three hundred thousand with the idea that we would split whatever he was able to sell it for about three hundred thousand that was the summer of 2001 and basically Don very quickly had a deal and we had 9/11 and Don's deal suddenly evaporated so here he had this enormous amount of money invested in the blanket and his deal just disappeared now this went on for actually several years and Don finally wound up selling this it sold I think for around four hundred four hundred and fifty thousand it was sold to an anonymous buyer who donated it to Detroit Institute of the Arts it's still there on display the Navajo weaving market is crazy now and so I think that with the collection history that we have on the piece I could probably support a price on this higher than a million dollars we hope you've enjoyed this special episode of extraordinary five congratulate can't get enough extraordinary finds don't miss the exclusive interactive experience with behind the scenes photos after the show stories and bonus footage at pbs.org slash and t and tell us what you think at Roadshow PBS and I think since we sold it north of $50,000 if any one of you just take it off the hook that's only the first phone call we've had since in a month and this is a beautiful place though I can't imagine living here though I would I'd hate to mow the lawn there'd be a lot of work in mowing the lawn that's for sure they said well I think that the number and we have in mind this a bit more than that on a good day this table has a chance of bringing two hundred thousand dollars and with all the stars aligned this has a chance of actually selling for three hundred thousand dollars right is that right we're gonna cut out the right right like they wanted it to be the same they wanted it to be the same he's awfully noisy I think he turned around and came back so today I would be estimating it at between 800,000 and a million to between $800,000 and 1 million $2,000 between 800,000 and a million 200,000 I would value the painting between 800,000 and 1.2 million dollars [Music] I'm Mark Wahlberg thanks for watching this special episode of extraordinary fine see you next time on Antiques Roadshow guests came in with what to me is the most historic and significant item I've ever appraised on the Rhode show this is the artist rendering before the coffee set was made it's arguably the most magnificent most important twentieth-century piece of metal work in America Wow the finished set is now in the Rhode Island School of Design I was watching Antiques Roadshow and on my television screen came the original design drawing for this service and I could hardly believe my eyes from the next morning I called the Antiques Roadshow to see if I might be able to talk to the owner of the drawing and it is now part of the collection at the RISD museum it's just great that this drawing that was in the family for three generations as a great where it needs to be united with the coffee set find all this and more at pbs.org slash antiques
