GUEST: It was handed to my mother from her mother. And it came from one of her relatives that was a Yachtsman, and he won it in a race in, uh, the Gulf of Mexico, I guess it was. They're from Biloxi, Mississippi, and she gave it to us. And we put it on the shelf, and that's about all I know about it.

APPRAISER: Right. Do you know where it's from, where it was made?

GUEST: Um, I don't, I don't know where it was.

APPRAISER: Okay, well, it was made in New Orleans, in Louisiana.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: So the mark is on the base here. It's marked for Hyde & Goodrich, which were a retailer in New Orleans, sort of similar to Tiffany in New York. They were sort of the big name. And what's interesting, there's another mark on here. There's an H, and the H actually stands for the, the name of the person who actually did the silversmithing.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: So Adolphe Himmel, who was a German immigrant, who came into New Orleans in the 19th century. And this piece is probably 1850s, pre-Civil War South. New Orleans is a very large, important city on the Mississippi. It's got, um, trade, and there's a lot of money there. And so people were buying these sort of rich and ornate silver items. It' s a water pitcher, a form very typical of the time and place. This fantastic handle looks like a branch that has just been fashioned.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: There's a lot of greenery and flowers decorating it. Pretty impressive piece for New Orleans in the 1850s. For insurance purposes, I think you want to think about a figure at around $10,000.

GUEST: Whoa, are you kidding me?

APPRAISER: I'm not.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness. Is it solid silver?

APPRAISER: It is solid silver.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: Southern silver, very popular. Um, not a lot of it, great design, great style.

GUEST: That's a real surprise.