GUEST: Got it at a garage sale about five years ago.

APPRAISER: And what attracted you to it?

GUEST: He's fantastic!

I think he's just totally good-looking.

I don't know if he's, like, a little god or a little demon.

On his butt, there's a fox.

APPRAISER: (laughing) GUEST: (laughing): So, you know, you have to buy something that has a fox butt.

You do-- yeah.

APPRAISER: Was this an antique store or...?

GUEST: No, no, it was at a garage sale... APPRAISER: Garage sale.

GUEST: ...with, um, two acrimonious divorcing people who were selling each other's things for way too cheaply.

So three dollars.

I don't know anything about him, except he's good-looking in a freaky kind of way.

APPRAISER: (laughs) This is a Tibetan deity.

GUEST: Ooh.

APPRAISER: He's called Vajrapani.

Vajrapani was a bodhisattva and one of the eight heart-sons of Shakyamuni Buddha.

And he had numerous manifestations, but the two main ones were that he was a benevolent deity or, in this po, pose, a wrathful deity.

He's a protector deity.

His job here is to protect the sutras in all written documents that are associated with Sakyamuni, with the Buddha.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And so here he is holding a thunderbolt, and he has his hands in a mudra.

This gilt bronze sculpture is lacking its base, which would have either been in the form of a lotus base or a wave-designed, again, gilt bronze base.

He's basically tamping down all rivals or people who would subvert him from protecting his texts.

And it's a cold gilding process-- it's a mercury gilding process, which heightens his robes and leaves his face bare.

He also, if he were intact, because he's minus his base, would have had some prayers consecrated or a dedication put inside of him, and then he would have been consecrated by a, a lama.

So, you say you paid three dollars for him at a garage sale?

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Well, at auction, even lacking his base, today, as an 18th-century...

GUEST: Oh!

APPRAISER: ...figure, he would bring somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 at auction.

GUEST: (exhales through gritted teeth) Whoa, Nellie!

Wow!

Real... (exhales) Good job, little guy.

(laughs) Yeah.