18th-Century German Painted Trunk
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APPRAISER:
This almost looked like the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW logo coming in. Why don't you tell us something about this trunk?
GUEST:
Well, it's been in my family for as long as I've known. The story goes, is that my great-grandmother's grandmother, which would be three greats, I guess, brought this over with her from Germany, and everything that she owned was inside of it when she brought it across. She actually met her husband after she just got off the ship in New York. These markings here, through the Civil War, they were actually traveling at one time or another, and the Confederates stopped them on some kind of a patrol, wanted to know what was in it, and they chopped into it to get into it.
APPRAISER:
Let's take a look at the inside... And you can see that there's a till on that side, which would have been for smaller things. It's got this great 18th century grab lock on the front, but her entire life would have been in this chest. Which is kind of extraordinary. And enmeshed in this is not only this kind of history of a particular furniture form, but also a piece of American history, because that's where the Confederates broke into the chest to see what kind of valuables were there. So it's one of those wonderful objects, where you've got a lot of threads that are sort of pulling together and making a really interesting story. And something like this, in this state of preservation, with its painted panels, in as good shape as they are, would probably be worth, at auction, somewhere between $8,000 to $12,000.
GUEST:
Wow. We use it to store Christmas ornaments in. (laughs)
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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