1882 H.W. Faust "Map & Guide of San Francisco"
APPRAISER:
You brought in this pretty beat-up map.
GUEST (chuckling): It is beat-up.
APPRAISER (chuckling): Can you tell me where you got it?
GUEST:
It was a garage sale, believe it or not. This was attached to an Old West poster, which first caught my eye, and by looking on the back, this was on the back side of that, and I thought, "Well, for... for $20 or $30, I'll take them both."
APPRAISER:
All righty. This is a map of San Francisco from 1882. It was done by a guy named Faust, who did a whole series of maps of San Francisco. And they were done for people to have to use to travel around. Like today, if you go and find a tourist map. And this one is beat-up, but it's basically all here. And so it lets us see San Francisco as somebody who was visiting San Francisco in 1882 would see it. It shows the street cars, which were of course around, and they're the dotted lines along here. It is a snapshot of the city from the time that's rare now just 'cause not many survive. Now, condition is obviously super-important on this. But even given the condition that it is, if you saw this in a shop that was selling old maps or old San Francisco memorabilia, you'd expect to see maybe $350, $400 on it, even in this kind of condition.
GUEST:
No kidding.
Appraisal Details
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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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