Reproduction Paul Revere Military Pass
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GUEST:
We had bought a picture at a yard sale, and we'd had it for a couple of years. And I decided I wanted to use the frame for something else, so I began to take it apart, and this was behind it.
APPRAISER:
Well, when you showed me this, immediately I saw the name Paul Revere here, and then Joseph Warren here. How did those names strike you when you saw this?
GUEST:
Well, I wasn't much into history when I was in school, so I learned a lot more about it when we came across this document.
APPRAISER:
Uh-huh
GUEST:
And we got some books and stuff from the library, and we learned how important he was during this time.
APPRAISER:
Right, Joseph Warren was Dr. Joseph Warren, who was killed at Bunker Hill. And he was one of the great Boston leaders in the early unpleasantries in the revolt against England. This reads that it was done in Cambridge, on the 29th of January, 1775. And it's a pass, and it was given to Paul Revere to get him through the military lines when he was carrying messages. A lot of these kinds of documents were reproduced in the late 19th century by historical societies. But then this one was all stained, and I thought that's strange. You know, usually they're clean, and they're newer looking. And the rough edges, although that looks like it's sort of a manufactured antique
GUEST:
Right
APPRAISER:
It could have been eaten away by bugs behind this particular backing that was on the picture you bought. So what I did is I looked at it with this magnifying glass-- it's a 30x power magnifying glass-- to see if this was printed writing or whether it was manuscript writing.
GUEST:
Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
And what I found out as I looked through this was that not only is the writing printed, but also even the stains on this is a printed stain, and you can see a pattern in that.
GUEST:
Oh, really?
APPRAISER:
And so that's the way you would look at a document like this and tell.
GUEST:
Right
APPRAISER:
So we can probably assume that it was a manufactured piece done around the 1940s. If it was original, it would be worth probably $50,000.
GUEST:
Wow. (laughs)
APPRAISER:
But as it is, it's probably worth $20 or something like that.
GUEST:
Okay.
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