Carl Worner Folk Art Bottle, ca. 1900
GUEST: Well, it's a bottle that my great-great-step grandfather received. It's been a treasure throughout the family. When I was a little girl, I used to ask my mom to bring it off the shelf so I could sit and just watch it and look at it and just kind of, you know, pay attention to, to the details and say, "I wonder what they're doing." My mom passed away, um, almost six years ago. This was the only thing that I wanted from her. It warms my heart. My mom's the best, so...
APPRAISER: This was made by an itinerant artist called Carl Worner.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: If you want to talk about American folk art, to me, Carl Worner is the classic example of an itinerant artist who made things, really neat things, because he could, but also because that's how he subsisted. I'm sure that your relative probably fed him, gave him some meat or something in exchange for this. We don't have any records of...
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: If he was paid for any of this. If you put a map of the United States up and you put a dot in every place that his stuff has been found and where it was made, it would go all over the Midwest and it would go all over New England.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: And as far as we know, there's over a hundred of 'em in existence.
GUEST: Oh, wow. Okay.
APPRAISER: It's more interesting than the vast majority of them. For one thing, it's bigger, and it shows a meat market.
GUEST: It belonged to Seaver Erickson Smeby, who is my great-great step grandfather, um, who came from, uh, Norway and started the butcher shop.
APPRAISER: The most common ones are bars.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: 'Cause if you think about it, if he did one in a bar, he could, he could eat and drink.
GUEST: (laughing): Yeah.
APPRAISER: One of the things I always check when I look at one of these is to look under the bottom to make sure he didn't cut the bottom out to do it.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: And he, and he didn't. And if you look at the width of every piece of wood in here, it had to go down through the neck of the bottle. And how he ever assembled all that in there, your...
GUEST: I can't even imagine.
APPRAISER: Your guess is as good as mine. But that's part of the fascination of the story. He probably made this from wood scraps... ...and packing crates and whatever was available. I was talking to one of the other guys at the folk art table who's really in tune with the current market, and he said that this, that Worner's work is starting to see an uptick in interest.
GUEST: Oh, no kidding.
APPRAISER: Because it's just such a slice of American history, a retail price on this would be in the $4,500 range.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh. Wow. (sniffles) Wow. That's incredible. My mom would be happy. That's incredible. Wow. Wow.
APPRAISER: This is the third one of these...
GUEST: No kidding. No kidding.
APPRAISER:...that we've appraised on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
$4,500 Retail
Featured In
episode
Living History Farms, Hour 1
ROADSHOW visits Living History Farms for treasures and a top $75,000 to $125,000 find.
20th Century
appraisal
Comic Wind-up Toys, ca. 1930
appraisal
Barbie Accessories & Case, ca. 1960
appraisal
William Moorcroft Pottery, ca. 1910
appraisal
Understanding Our Appraisals
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."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
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.
Verbal approximations: The values given by the experts on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW are considered "verbal approximations of value." Technically, an "appraisal" is a legal document, generally for insurance purposes, written by a qualified expert and paid for by the owner of the item. An appraisal usually involves an extensive amount of research to establish authenticity, provenance, composition, method of construction, and other important attributes of a particular object.
Opinion of value: As with all appraisals, the verbal approximations of value given at ROADSHOW events are our experts' opinions formed from their knowledge of antiques and collectibles, market trends, and other factors. Although our valuations are based on research and experience, opinions can, and sometimes do, vary among experts.
Appraiser affiliations: Finally, the affiliation of the appraiser may have changed since the appraisal was recorded. To see current contact information for an appraiser in the ROADSHOW Archive, click on the link below the appraiser's picture. Our Appraiser Index also contains a complete list of active ROADSHOW appraisers and their contact details and biographies.
