HOST: Located in the metro Detroit area, this historic American manor, Cranbrook House, drew inspiration from the English Arts and Crafts movement. In Des Moines, Iowa, we visited another impressive estate home based on the king's house in Salisbury, England. This Salisbury House is filled with fine art, antique furniture and an impressive collection of books, manuscripts and historical documents. Expert Francis Wahlgren pulled a rare set from the shelf to explore.

HOST: So Francis, what do we have here today?

APPRAISER: It's an extra illustrated biography of Charles Dickens by his good friend John Forster.

HOST: So what exactly is an extra illustrated edition?

APPRAISER: An extra illustrated edition is any book into which additional material is inserted, whether that's printed or hand-written.

HOST: But these inserts are not by the publisher or the author; these are by the collector who's purchased the book.

APPRAISER: Exactly. In 1769, a gentleman by the name of James Granger took it upon himself to publish a biographical history of England, and because it was biographies, he left spaces and extra sheets in for people to find portraits of those figures and insert them and glue them into the book. And in the 19th century, it became very popular to Grangerize, as it became known, or extra-illustrate works.

HOST: It's sort of a high-end scrapbook, and we have one of the highest level here.

APPRAISER: This is a very remarkable set.

HOST: The original manuscript, the original book, The Life of Charles Dickens, which was published in 1870...?

APPRAISER: '72 to '74. He published it over a period of a year and a half. Three volumes. Yeah, your normal kind of... octavo is the size we'd say, but it's a normal smallish-sized book. What we have here is a growth that's taken place through various hands, different owners and it's expanded to now a very hefty nine tomes of material.

HOST: Let's take a look at some specific examples, and sometimes the owners have added things that are germane and specific to the original manuscript, and sometimes, it's a tangential reference.

APPRAISER: Yeah, that really is a decision that's made by the collector, how far afield they will go in enhancing the books. A collector with the means would go out of their way to get the finest impressions and plates they could find or the best documents they could find. This is an original illustrational leaf that's been removed from a true first edition of Oliver Twist. In the set, this appears right where he's talking about the publication of Oliver Twist, so he mentions the illustrator. So there, it gives you an example of an original illustration from the first edition. And then next to that, he's included an autographed letter of George Cruikshank, the artist.

HOST: Why would an Abraham Lincoln document end up in an extra illustrated volume of The Life of Charles Dickens?

APPRAISER: That's a good question. What I think is happening is it's 1863, it's Lincoln, who was a contemporary of Dickens, so you could argue that there's a connection there.

HOST: So as we talk about value, the original three-volume Life of Charles Dickens first edition book, what would that value be?

APPRAISER: Yeah, the book itself would be worth only a few hundred dollars as it came out. But now that it's been breathed out, as it were, into this extra illustration with such treasures like this Abraham Lincoln letter...

HOST: Let's talk about this, this one particular insert.

APPRAISER: We'd probably estimate this at $15,000 to $20,000, with the expectation it would exceed that. And that's one page in nine volumes.

HOST: If you were to find an extra illustration this expansive in this type of quality with these kind of important documents in it, what would you guess the range of value would be?

APPRAISER: I would say in this case, you'd be thinking about something like $80,000 to $120,000, with the expectation that it could go well beyond that. But certainly in the six figures.

HOST: Francis, thanks so much for sharing this. It's really fascinating, and I get the sense we could sit here for hours and not even scratch the surface of all that's inside here.

APPRAISER: It's my pleasure. It's always a privilege to come and see something as wonderful as this.