GUEST: This is Leadville--the town of Leadville-- but the rest of the map is showing the mining claims that were established in Leadville.

APPRAISER: This map is actually from 1901. It shows mines that produced hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of precious metals over a 50-, 60-year period. One of the most famous names in Leadville history is Tabor.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: And you have here a lot of papers from the Chrysolite Mine which belonged to William Tabor.

GUEST: Well, my father was a mining engineer in Leadville, and he had an associate who bought the Chrysolite Mine after Horace Tabor had owned it. Mr. Cliff, the one that bought the papers and the mine, didn't have any descendants, and my father inherited them.

APPRAISER: I see.

GUEST: And I inherited them.

APPRAISER: I noticed here that we have the incorporation papers, which were signed in 1879. There's the legal seal, and there's William H. Tabor's signature on the papers. Then we have, uh, a check which is endorsed by Tabor on the back.

GUEST: Yes. This is from the records of the mine.

APPRAISER: Tell me about some of the subjects that are covered in this.

GUEST: A lot of the things in this ledger book were the day-to-day expenses, things that went on with the mines, and we even have some pages here about the miners that died in the mines and how they died.

APPRAISER: So it deals in personnel. It gives the social history of the times of this great mining district.

GUEST: It talks about uprisings they had at the mines and buying guns to keep the miners from rioting and that sort of thing.

APPRAISER: So we have a wonderful piece of Colorado history here-- a very large piece. It's thousands of documents.

GUEST: Thousands of documents, yes.

APPRAISER: Right. So I would say that if this material was offered at auction, because of its great depth and extreme size and its very fine condition-- we have more here that we haven't even shown-- I would say that it's worth $40,000 to $60,000 at auction.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: Yeah, it's a treasure of another kind.

GUEST: Yes. Thank you.