Irene Gordon of Hemingway, a member of Santee Electric Cooperative, came to the Museum Road Show with daughter Crystal Gordon and Crystal’s niece, Kennedi Tomlinson. In addition to this painting, the family had several dishes to be appraised, including a gold-trimmed plate (“I bought it for $25 from a lady who said she needed some cash 40 years ago,” Irene Gordon said) and a hand-turned glazed pot Irene bought at a thrift store for $4 and has never used. The Gordons walked away happy with the mixed results of Steve Ferrell’s appraisal. The plate, thought to be made in Poland in the 1950s, could now be worth anywhere from $50 to $300. The hand-turned pot from the thrift store? It’s an everyday casserole dish. “Now we might use it to cook something,” Crystal Gordon said.
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George Robertson of Union, a member of Broad River Electric Cooperative, was curious about a framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet at the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. It came into his possession from his 95-year-old mother, and when he last looked up a similar painting on the Antiques Roadshow website in 2006, he saw it could sell for $800 to $900. “Unfortunately, it’s a reproduction of the print. But a nice, little historical image,” fine arts appraiser Amy Chapman said after examining the image. Robertson didn’t seem too disappointed. “I didn’t have nothing when I came,” he said with a shrug, before touring the rest of the museum with his family.
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Tommy and Beth Self of Sumter brought some of the day’s most historically important pieces—an 18th-century proclamation about the condition of Charleston slaves, a Springfield musket and this early-19th-century U.S. Eagle Head officer’s sword. The couple has no desire to sell the items, preferring to pass them on to their children. Tommy Self said he had the items appraised mostly “to gain a lot of great information.”
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Expert appraiser Miller Gaffney breaks the news to writer Hastings Hensel—his great grandfather’s engraved souvenir cup from the 1893 World’s Fair is “something of sentimental value,” but not worth a great deal of money in today’s antiques markets.