I love watching Antiques Roadshow. People bring their family treasures handed down for generations or art they bought at a yard sale or a vase they pulled out of a dumpster to let appraisers judge its value. Then they most often get super disappointed that great-great-great-great-great grandma’s tea cup and saucer are worth $2. The appraisers usually have a heart and let them down easy before revealing their “Tiffany” lamp is a knockoff.
However, as someone who loves to frequent junk stores and loves a happy ending, sometimes the stories go a different direction with a supposed painting by Picasso really being a work created by the artist and worth big bucks in a New York auction. Those outcomes are the reason people really watch and continue to haul giant pieces of furniture to a nearby city to be judged.
Such was the case this past weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma when a man’s cups made from rhinoceros horns were valued at between $1 and $1.5 million. The five cups, which he acquired in the 1970s, were created in China and were given as gifts among the wealthy during the late 17th century and early 18th century.
The previous record on the show was set last summer in Raleigh, North Carolina when a piece of ancient jade was appraised at more than a million.
I think I’ll continue to scour the neighborhood junk stores and yard sales. You just never know when you’ll run across that unexpected treasure.