1838 Texas Land Office Book
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GUEST:
Besides being very old and tattered, it's a book of the, from the Texas General Land Office of the original title of record. It was printed in 1838, when Texas was a republic. It has to be printed by the Congress of Texas because they needed a record of who are the original land holders at the time of being the republic.
APPRAISER:
And these presumably, throughout these pages, are those original land holders to whom property was granted. Is that correct?
GUEST:
Yes, sir, that is correct. It was my grandfather's, and we think he got it from his father, which owned a good bit of property in east Texas, but he could have also gotten it through my great maternal grandmother, who was also related by marriage to the Houston family. We're not sure, but we got it now.
APPRAISER:
Yes. Items of this type come up for market extremely rarely. And we've got something here that is two years later than the Alamo. Houston, 1838. The physical condition, as you've said, does leave something to be desired, but conservation could soon put this right.
GUEST:
My mother was doing a lot of research, and I guess originally, there was about 1,000 printed.
APPRAISER:
Yes.
GUEST:
But she thinks she can only find about 12 in existence.
APPRAISER:
12, yes.
GUEST:
Yes, sir. And most of them are really, are only in public institutions.
APPRAISER:
I believe in 1966 or 1967, one was valued at about $2,500.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
And I think now that you could certainly put a comfortable auction estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 on it. And it might be worth significantly more, because the auction estimates now are fairly conservative. And I hope you're... I hope you're happy with that.
GUEST:
I'm just shocked.
APPRAISER:
All right, well...
GUEST:
I'm speechless.
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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