Mickey & Minnie Rocking Chair, ca. 1935
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GUEST:
My mother gave me this for my first birthday, which would've been in May of 1935. It's been in the family ever since. I sat in it, my sons have sat in it, and my wife and my son's grandchildren sat in it.
APPRAISER:
I'm always excited when I see a piece that has come down through and been preserved like this. And as I understand it, you've tried to do a little research to figure out...
GUEST:
I've tried to look in the antique books, I've gone to antique stores, I've looked on the internet. And while we were down at Disney World, I talked to the people down there about it. No one knows a thing about that chair, not at all, so we figured we'd come to the authorities, so here we are.
APPRAISER:
Oh, well, that's great. Well, what you have here, of course, is a Mickey Mouse rocking chair, and of course, Mickey Mouse is on one side, and as you know, on the other side, we have his girlfriend, Minnie. This was part of a set of children's furniture. There was a Mickey Mouse table, two chairs, there was a Pluto stool, and there was a horse-collar bookcase about this tall. Well, of all the pieces, this is the one that a Mickey Mouse collector would really like to have, because this has probably some of the finest Mickey Mouse graphics from the classic '30s period. And it's just in remarkable condition. One of the things that we use to date Mickey Mouse is what we call the "pie eye," where they would animate the eye by cutting that little sliced pie. That dates it as a '30s Mickey. What I also found intriguing, and I didn't know until you brought this in, was that it was made by the Kroehler Manufacturing Company, who was probably one of the-- still one of the great commercial furniture makers in this country. That speaks to the solidity and the survivability of this, which is a very fine piece of furniture. Probably quite expensive in its day. Today, I would say retail value in this condition would be $1,000 to $1,200.
GUEST:
Well, that's great. Good, good.
APPRAISER:
So it was good you saved it, and thank you for bringing it in.
GUEST:
Well, thank you so much for telling me about it.
APPRAISER:
Really appreciate it.
GUEST:
Appreciate it, thank you.
Appraisal Details
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