By Bill Brown
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-725837.mp3
Dallas, TX – Here they come, people, about as far as you can see, almost six-thousand of them packing into the cavernous exhibit hall, a line of still others reaching outside.
They're here on a treasure hunt. Steve of Dallas is one of those in line, pushing a cart with an ornate chair. He thinks it came from China.
Steve and his chair are part of the taping of Antiques Roadshow, public television's most popular program with eleven million viewers. After a decade it's rolled back into Dallas. It's the show that encourages people to dig through boxes in their attics and dust off old family heirlooms they may know little about.
They load them into the family car and stand in line for a chance to have the Roadshow's appraisers eyeball them, expound on their origins and pronounce them priceless jewels or just sentimental junk. Inside the convention center, appraisers examine paintings, posters, old toys, maybe even great grandpa's six-shooter. And there's furniture.
Various Appraisers Describing Collectibles:
This is considered anti-bellum American furniture, probably the Civil War.
The top is all inlaid and it's done very primitive.
This is worth five-thousand. As a Charleston piece, it's worth fifty-thousand.
Fewer than 100 of the thousands who show up will be chosen for the TV program. Lynn, who drove all the way from Lubbock with friends may be one of them.
Lynn: Do you know what this is? It's a pig sticker. When you hung the pig to cook it, this would tell you when it was done.
Lynn is showing an appraiser a giant double-barreled black metal contraption, with flowers painted on it. It's a real head-turner: bristling with bins and shelves, tools, tiny drawers, openings, lids and compartments.
She calls it a portable pantry, and thinks it once sat in a chuck wagon on Texas roundups and cattle drives more than a century ago.
Lynn: In here, this is soda and this is salt, and there's a little lever down here that you open up. The coffee goes in here. It grinds here.
Do you think you might win a prize for having the weirdest looking thing here?
It's not weird! That is awesome!
We'll check in with Lynn later to see what the appraiser has to say.
For now, we meet up with the executive producer of Antiques Roadshow, Marsha Bemko. She says the great appeal of the show comes from the people and the amazing stories they bring:
Marsha Bemko: "I never tire of everybody's joy. I never tire of talking with people. It is fun for me. It's fun for all of us. I've seen happy tears and I've seen sad tears.
And occasionally she's seen something worthy of a Sotheby's auction.
Appraiser Dean Failey is eyeballing a rustic old wooden chest discovered in a barn in the Texas hill country.
Failey: It's a combination, which you find in a lot of southern Texas counties because of the German population. This was made, I'd guess in about 1860. In Texas, I would think a piece like this would go for two to three-thousand dollars.
Lynn hopes she has a rare find, too. She's reached the head of the line, and waits nervously to hear what appraiser Gary Summers has to say about frontier pantry
Summers: I've seen things like this sell, and if you're gonna insure it, cause I don't think you're gonna sell it, you've got too much use and love and history with it, but you should probably insure this for around five-thousand dollars
Not bad considering Lynn paid just one thousand for it. The appraiser's right, there's no way she'd sell. And the Antiques Roadshow hasn't made her a millionaire. She won't be on TV, but finally she knows what her piece of Texas history is worth. And being in the middle of all this fascinating, old stuff was just plain fun.