EDGAR: What's going on? CHUMLEE: Not much. What can I do for you? Got this violin here. It's been in my family for a
very long time, Stradivarius. CHUMLEE: Stradivarius? EDGAR: Yeah. CHUMLEE: Every once in
a while one comes up. It's very, very rare. I mean, we're talking big money. Even in this condition
we're talking, you know, hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Yeah, I've seen millions. [laughs] I have a Stradivarius violin. This violin has been in my
family for a very long time. It belonged to my grandfather. I know there's a lot
of copies or whatnot, but there's a lot
of information that point to it being authentic. I think a reasonable
price would be $700,000. CHUMLEE: What makes you
think this is a Stradivarius? EDGAR: One of the
things I noticed, there's a label inside, 1731. Yeah, it says right in
there Antonio Stradivarius, and this is Cremona. That's the town he
was from in Italy. From my understanding is
the copies had to have a label on there that said copy. It became a law, actually. CHUMLEE: Antonio Stradivarius
was known for making the best violin of the time. And I'm not a violin expert, but
I think he was known for making the best violin of all time. EDGAR: My understanding is
they have a particular sound. My grandfather purchased
it because it sounded better than the violin he had. CHUMLEE: This is
pretty cool, man. It's in pretty rough condition. It's got some cracks down here. It even looks like
maybe at some point dad or grandpa tried to
glue it back together, or maybe you did. I don't know. [laughs] Not me. But a lot of times they're
in such bad condition because these were, you
know, tools of the trade. People made their
living off this, and they would get beat up
and smashed around a lot. EDGAR: Yeah. So how much are you
looking to get for it? Well, based on the
condition that it's in and what they go for,
$700,000 I think is fair. OK. I mean, just looking at it, to
me it looks far from $700,000, but I have no idea. I have some concerns. One is the condition. You know, the condition
is everything. Two, I know that once
something's worth money, people fake it. There's a lot of
questions I have here. EDGAR: Yeah. I'd like to call in a friend
of mine and have him come down and take a look at this. Yeah, that sounds good. All right, give me a minute. Hang out. Look around. I'll call him up, get him down
here, and we'll go from there. OK, sounds good. I'm happy to have an
expert look at the violin today and move along
with this whole process and find out what it really is. AQUILES: Check it out. Yeah, I don't know too much
about Antonio Stradivarius. What was so special about
his designs behind these? Ooh, man, so when you want
to talk about the great violins in history,
Stradivarius, that name, is the one that leads the way. You're talking the
wood selection, varnish, fantastically made. They're beautiful,
but they're tools. They have to perform
a specific task. And for most violinists,
that's a soloist. So you're talking
about a person who's standing in front of
anywhere between a 50- and 80-piece orchestra, and they
have to be heard above that. So you need an instrument
of exceptional quality and power and skill,
and Stradivarius violins unsurpassed. What kind of price range is
out there for these violins? AQUILES: Sure. So if this is a real
Stradivarius violin-- there's one of his violas. They want $40 million for it. And it's not sold
yet, but give it time. Someone will buy it. Those things, they get older
and they get more valuable. Well, let's take
a look at this and see if that's
what we got here. I'm excited. So the first couple
of things that I look at are to see if all
the parts line up correctly, which this one does. But it has significant damage. His wood selection
was such that when he put the varnish
on his instruments and you would move it like
this and it would sort of look like it's rippling. Really just majestic, beautiful. But on this violin, I'm
seeing a little too much dark and even in this
patch that's revealing it's a sort of a muted brown. And the inner linings of
this, that line inside there is just a little too
haphazard to be anything that he would have made. He doesn't make those mistakes. He takes so much time. 1731 puts it right towards the
middle end of his middle period when he was making some
of his absolute best stuff, his best instruments. So are you telling me you
don't think this is authentic? Unfortunately, no. No. This instrument was
made as an homage. So what you have is from about
the 1830s to about the 1960s, really, they would mass
produce these in the millions. Do you think it
has any value to it? In its current
shape, not a lot. Well, thanks for coming down. AQUILES: Yeah. I wish we would have hit
gold with this one, but-- That's always the hope, man. That's always the hope. Can't strum all the strings. So he doesn't
think it's a Strad. I'm going out to have to,
you know, go with him. I'm going to have to pass on it. Well, thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you. OK. For now we'll just,
you know, keep it safe. Probably make a
little case for it and hang it up on the
wall as a little homage to our grandfather.
And who goes to a pawn shop with a Stradivarius
I like how they needed to call in a "violin guy" expert when any bozo could pick out the extremely poorly faked label.
I mean this would be like walking in with a limited edition "Beatles Original Pressing Vinyl" but it was spelled BEETLES on the front and have the guy say "I have a guy that knows vinyls a lot, I gotta call him in".
Gotta be kidding me... It's just tv I guess. I don't know want to be hating on them for just trying to entertain people.
I had a teacher once who was, and still is a great player and respected professor. He related this story to me once which was entertaining. Even if he has embellished a number of tales in the short time I played for him... He also once said I sounded like a dying cat once...I don't disagree. I gave up violin but oh the memories...
Anyway this one time he struck up a conversation with some random guy who wanted to buy a junky violin at an antique store where they were both at, and random guy was negotiating price with the store owner.
My teacher decides to try and play the fiddle a little and taps on the back and annouced the wood knock did not sound like an F# and hence the fiddle was worthless. The price went down in a hurry and the random guy left happy with a junk violin with a price tag he liked.
Don't know if the story was true. But I like to think that it was.
This is so painful to watch. So many incorrect statements made in just the opening minute. Ugh.
In 2 seconds I assessed the violin as near worthless.
Holy crap that is a rough violin, even if it was a real strad I wouldn't want to pay to restore