On Saturday, August 1, 2009 Amy and I attended the taping of Antiques Roadshow at the Phoenix Convention Center. A few months back, I put my name in for a lottery to win tickets, and actually won them! I watch Antiques Roadshow on TV all the time, and have been for years. I love antiques, I love television productions, and merging the two together was immensely exciting for me.
Amy and Jessica at Antiques Roadshow
For our antiques I brought some old books from my DaD and bibles from great-grandmother Helen Gorski. Amy brought Trafari pins and a Squash Blossom necklace, both from Sophie Dominik. Amy and I parked her car at her workplace and took the Light Rail downtown to Washington and 3rd Street, right outside the Convention Center. We had a 2:00pm entrance time and arrived at 1:30pm. By 2:20pm we had made it through the categorization line and had our tickets for the Books, Jewelry and Tribal Arts lines.
We started at the line for Books and Manuscripts. There were only about 15 people in line. We made it to the front pretty quickly and got in line inside the production area. While in the area, I noticed an appraisal being taped of a woman wearing a light blue baseball cap and she had two dark brown shiny glazed pots. I believe I was directly in the shot straight behind the appraiser, but we’ll have to see if my ugly mug shows up on television.
For books, there were two appraisers, a woman and an older man. We overheard the man’s appraisals and he was giving a lot of detailed information about the books to the people in front of us. I was getting really excited at this point, to finally meet our first appraiser! We ended up going to the woman, who was pretty rude to us and clearly did not want to be there. She said my leather bound, gold embossed copy of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe from 1888 was “commonly given as a graduation or birthday gift” and had no real value. (I found one on eBay in bad condition for $120, so what gives?) She then picked up my Little Library copy of Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and said if I had the entire set it would be worth $100. Since I only had one, it had no value. Then she picked up the two bibles from my great-grandmother, and said, “Oh I’ve seen tons of these today. They are very common.” She tried to convince me that the oldest one was from 1896, and I told her the next page said it was printed in 1911.
We left Books pretty discouraged, and wandered over to Tribal Arts. The line was huge – easily 150 people. I walked over and noticed Jewelry only had about 20 people, so I snagged Amy and we waited for the Jewelry line instead. It went fairly quickly but we still waited about 20-30 minutes. Once inside the production area, we approached a man who smiled and seemed generally happy to be there. He examined the two Trafari Ragdoll pins that Amy had brought, and told us quite a bit about their history. He said the stones came in red, green, orange and clear (hers were green). He gave her an estimate of about $75/ea. She then showed him a Jade ring from her great-grandmother, Malvina Dominik. (We realized at this point, the 2-item limit was complete BS and people were having tons of things appraised.) He examined the ring and said it came from China, and that many Polish immigrants came through Russia and China to get to the USA in the 1910 time frame. We know Malvina came through New York, so we’re not sure how she got the ring. He said the stone was too light to be of any real monetary value, but it was pretty and sentimental, and he thanked us for bringing it.
Ticket for Antiques Roadshow Phoenix
We left the Jewelry table with lighter spirits, as the man was genuinely nice and sincere. I was smiling after this and one of the production managers noticed it, and gave me a friendly nudge and said something to the effect that we must have just hit a big one! I said no, the appraiser was just really nice to us. He seemed to be having fun there too. It was a weird mix of people who were excited and happy, and people who thought it was just another day at the office.
We headed toward the Tribal Arts line which was longer than when we originally got into it. The line ended up being about 1 hr 45 minutes of standing on concrete, which sucked a lot. Luckily I had asked one of the volunteers about a chair and they gave us a chair to use in line, so we took turns sitting for a bit while we waited. We talked to people who drove in from California, Idaho and lots of other places just to come to the show. In fact, I didn’t talk to anyone from Arizona! The snowbird behind us moved to Arizona early from Illinois this year just so he could attend the Roadshow. He applied for tickets at the Madison, Wisconsin show but didn’t get them.
Once we finally made it to the beginning of the line, we found out what the holdup was. Tribal Arts only had two appraisers, and they kept finding stuff to film, so they would have to get up and do a TV segment. Leaving only one appraiser to work the table, the line kept backing up more and more. Even the guy in line in front of us got pulled to go on television with his wool woven red Indian rug. He had said he thought it was worth about $7,000, and it must have been good, because he got on TV with it.
Here is where things got really exciting for me! We were brought into the production area and the line was right next to Mark Walburg! He was taping a few lines for the show, including the closing remarks. We got to watch as he flubbed lines and talked to the producer. He asked him, “Should I say this funny, or serious, or sarcastic… How do you want it?” People in the audience kept making excessive noise or staring at the camera (which they were told not to look at) so he kept having to do them over and over again. I felt kind of bad for him. Talk about pressure! Standing in the middle of a few thousand people staring at you, on camera and having to do it over and over again. On a fun note, I did get to see the twins! (For those who don’t know, that’s Leigh and Leslie Keno.)
Sophie Dominik and her Squash Blossom Necklace
We made it to the front of the Tribal Arts table and talked to a nice woman. She took Amy’s squash blossom necklace and examined it. “These are all handmade silver beads, the necklace is hand made and hand set, the turquoise is very nice and the design is quite nice. It is likely Navajo [from northern AZ] or Zuni made [from Gallup, Texas] and was made in the 1940′s or early 1950′s. It’s worth about twelve to fifteen hundred.” Holy crap! $1200-$1500?! Amy pulled out the single earring we had that Sophie used to wear with the necklace. The other earring is forever lost. The appraiser lit up – she said the earring was beautiful and she loved it. Alone as a single it is worth about $150, and as a set would bring about $500 at auction. Dang it, I wish we knew what happened to the other one!
We thanked the Tribal Arts appraiser and walked outside the production area. I grabbed my Blackberry and started writing down the details so we wouldn’t forget anything she said. Amy and I agree that it must be Navajo, because Sophie had never gone to Texas. The family moved to Arizona in 1949 and she must have got it shortly after arriving here. We were both absolutely stunned to find out how valuable it is. We had made guesses at about $100-$200 as we were waiting.
After that, we headed towards the Feedback Booth. I came up with a little skit for us while we waited, which was only a minute or so because nobody else was doing the Feedback Booth. The cameraman called for us and we entered the booth, and performed our little skit. The cameraman laughed at the end and said, “That was good!” I think we have a pretty good chance of making it on camera at the end of the show. We shall see! The show is scheduled to air on PBS in January, 2010.
So there you have it. Amy and I had a great adventure at Antiques Roadshow here in Phoenix! We took the Light Rail back to Amy’s car, and then had dinner at Olive Garden with Andrew. It was a really fun day, and I’m so glad we went!
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