Queen Anne Style Highboy, ca. 1925
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GUEST:
This was a family piece and it's been passed down.
APPRAISER:
How long have you owned it?
GUEST:
50 years is all I can go back.
APPRAISER:
When we appraise something, the first thing we try to do is look at proportion and design and try to regionalize it.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And everything I'm seeing here, which is the bonnet top, these carved fans on the upper and lower drawers, the veneer on the front of the drawers, which is crotch-figured mahogany, these finials and then the cabriole legs and the base with these little pad feet. All of those are characteristics of Boston, Salem, Massachusetts, around 1760. If you look at this from a design point of view, the bonnet is a little bit lower. It's compressed.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
When these master craftsmen in Boston made a piece, they made a piece very vertical and it just flew up in the top. Another thing we have here is in terms of the width. The width is not... it's not narrow enough. This piece proportionally is a little bit too wide. It should be more vertical.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
As we look a little bit closer, in the 18th century, we wouldn't have seen rosettes on the top of the bonnet. The bonnet would finish in a very simple, angular terminus. One of the factors to evaluate a piece of furniture is looking at wear. And I don't see any splits or breaks on the edges of these lips. This fan is carved in a way that's not as well articulated as they would in the 18th century. These are a little bit-- if I may say-- crude.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
The other problem we have is on the base, we wouldn't have seen carved acanthus leaves during the Queen Anne period. They just left it plain.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Now if we open up the drawers, we're going to look at the construction. And someone, I think, has stained these drawers in order to...
GUEST:
...make it look old.
APPRAISER:
Make it look old. Exactly. So this piece was probably made to deceive. Probably made in the 1920s.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
If you look at the nails here, that's a round head nail, and you should see a rose head nail. So these are some of the details that are important to help authenticate American furniture.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So being a 1920s highboy, it's probably in the area of $1,500 to $2,500.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And that's an auction price. Now, had this been original, one sold privately once in the range of $600,000 with all the extras.
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."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
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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