1967 Campbell's Soup Paper Dress
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GUEST:
I purchased it in 1967 BC, before children. We just purchased a house, and I purchased for my wife-- we were going to have a party. Instead of a party we had twins, and we put this dress away for 34 years. Then we watched the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW in the year 2001, a lady had a dress made out of newspapers, and the lady told her she didn't know what the dress was worth, but there was a Campbell's Soup paper dress worth $1,200. So I got all excited. A gentleman framed it for us, but if you'll notice, it's wrinkled, and he said instead of ironing and making it nice and neat, we left it exactly the way we pulled it out of our basement. An appraiser came through about a year later and told me the dress was worth approximately $40, so that's all I know.
APPRAISER:
Well, the dress, as you know, was made by Campbell's Soup, because that's where you purchased it in 1967 to sort of capitalize on a fad of women wearing paper dresses. It was a very short-lived fad. And here we can see the original label. This was made one size fits all, and you could make it as short as you wanted by cutting it off. It's really fun to see a Warhol-inspired work on the ROADSHOW. It's great that you have preserved it as well as you have. Now, about a month ago, one of these sold for over $2,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER:
So I think you could expect to get maybe between $2,000 and $3,000 at auction.
GUEST:
Is that right? Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
GUEST:
I'll have to have my homeowner's insurance up. Well, thank you very much, that's... (laughs) For a ten-dollar dress my wife never wore! Oh, my God.
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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