Rock-Ola Juke Box, ca. 1948
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GUEST:
My dad was in the American Legion, and he was down at the, uh, Legion Hall one day, in the storage room, and happened to see this sitting in a corner, and asked if they wanted to sell it, and they thought they might as well. They used to use it for, uh, dances and that sort of thing, but they hadn't used it in years. And this is, like, 1971. And, uh, so anyway, he acquired it that way, and, uh, brought it home, and we've had it ever since.
APPRAISER:
Did you ever find out what he paid for it or do you know?
GUEST:
(laughs softly): Well, he was kind of cagey about some of those type of things. Uh, he said $25, but I, I don't know about that.
APPRAISER:
It is a Rock-Ola. Uh, it's a model 1428, uh, which was manufactured in 1948. It plays, uh, 78 RPMs and it holds 20 of them. Uh, this is sort of the end of the golden era of these light-up jukeboxes, and the demise came as a result of the fact that it couldn't handle more records. Rock-Ola was founded by David Rockola in about 1927. He bought the rights to the mechanism which would change the records, and he became a very fierce competitor of Wurlitzer, and one of the leading manufacturers of jukeboxes. You gotta love the name Rock-Ola. It's very fine condition, you know? These are certainly vulnerable to damage. Uh, the sides are plywood, and can bubble and warp, and you can see, if we look at this one, paint specks, very authentic.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And then if we opened up the front of the box, you can see that it's just pristine inside.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And condition matters in everything. People pay a premium for it. Do you have a thought of what it's worth today?
GUEST:
No, not really, we've, uh, tried to get it appraised, and it's, never has worked out to get somebody to check it out for sure. So I don't have any idea.
APPRAISER:
Okay. I think in today's market, a fair auction estimate would be $2,000 to $3,000.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
And might fetch a little bit more just because of the condition of it. I mean, it really is...
GUEST:
Oh, that's great.
APPRAISER:
...uh, uncommon to find them this, this clean.
GUEST:
I see, yeah.
APPRAISER:
So...
GUEST:
We've had a lot of fun with it.
Appraisal Details
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.
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