♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: "Roadshow" has landed in the Ozark Mountains at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

When I saw this at the top of your stack, my eyes popped out of my head.

Geez-o-Pete-o.

(laughs) Wow!

♪ ♪ PEÑA: Crystal Bridges opened its doors in 2011.

In 2014, the museum and its founder, Alice Walton, made headlines with the purchase of Georgia O'Keeffe's iconic work, "Jimson Weed/White Flower No.

1" which sold for $44.4 million, setting a record for the most expensive painting by a female artist.

The piece is a standout example of O'Keeffe's work because it's the very first Jimson weed still life she ever made, but also because it epitomizes her modernist style and the ways in which she monumentalized the ordinary and the humble.

Here, a delicate and commonplace flower becomes bold and extraordinary.

What extraordinary treasures are our experts finding at Crystal Bridges?

Hi.

You've been taking good care of this.

You don't have a dog, do you?

No, in the house where it was, it did not.

(chuckles) GUEST: I had two pieces, one was this bowl, and one was a vase.

I'd been told by some people that one was fake and wasn't sure about this one, so I was gonna see if it was for real.

It was in some of my sister's stuff.

She recently passed away.

She collected a lot of different things, and she probably bought it in an estate sale.

Well, uh, it's real.

(chuckles) It is real?

Yeah.

Oh, good.

Yes, it is Tiffany.

Uh-huh.

It's what we call pastel glass.

It came in different colors.

It also came in yellow, wisteria, pink, and blue.

Uh-huh.

This is a little more interesting because it-it is a footed form, and if you look closely, it has this lovely quilted pattern.

Sometimes people call it the rice pattern.

The date of this would be around the mid-1920s.

It has a right signature, just the way-- Good.

Good.

Yeah, that's a signature that you only see... Mm-hmm.

...in the 1920s.

Okay.

In a retail store, this would sell for between $1,000 and $1,500.

Oh, great.

Great.

GUEST: This is an ice cream cone that was displayed at my parents' Daisy Queen in Hayti, Missouri.

They owned this, uh, drive-in restaurant from December of 1959 until May of 1982.

And in the year of 1960, my dad was working, and some of the girls that worked for him noticed that a customer that had pulled up to the north window looked like Elvis Presley.

He goes, "No, it can't be."

(soft chuckle) So he walked up to the window and raised it and said, "Excuse me, sir, can you settle an argument?

"These girls think you're Elvis Presley.

Would you tell them you're not?"

He goes, "No, sir, I am Elvis Presley."

(laughs) He pulled out his billfold, showed him his driver's license.

It said "Elvis Presley.

Memphis, Tennessee."

Wow.

He had flown from California to St. Louis and rented a Cadillac, him and his cousin Gene Smith.

The reason they flew into St. Louis was to avoid the fans and media at the airport in Memphis.

And they'd stopped for lunch at my parents' drive-in restaurant.

While he was there, my dad got to talking to him.

He said he was very polite and he asked for his autograph.

And this was on display in the Daisy Queen.

And Elvis signed it with a grease pencil that my dad had.

And he looked at it, he said, "I don't really like the signature, can I do it again?"

And my dad said, "Do it as many times as you want to."

(laughs) So he signed it twice.

Wow.

And it was on display in our Daisy Queen for several years, probably eight or ten years.

So the grease and the smoke from the food being cooked kind of discolored it.

And through the years, people that worked for us, they also signed their names on there.

Do you know exactly when it was in 1960?

It was June 29 of 1960.

Based on that date, 29 of June, Elvis had just finished filming "G.I.

Blues."

"G.I.

Blues," yeah.

So that came out around November 1960.

Okay.

He'd actually just come out of the army.

This was his first movie after coming out of the army.

So there was a lot of fuss about him.

As you say, there are two signatures on here, which is very, very cool.

Very unusual to have something signed with such a big, bold signature.

And it's really nice because both of them are very, very visible.

Did your father manage to ever get a photograph taken at the time with Elvis?

While Elvis was there, uh, my dad says, "Would you stay a few more minutes?

Let me run home, get a camera, and come back."

And Elvis says, "As long as the crowds don't start forming, I'll wait a little bit longer."

So my dad rushes home, he gets the camera, jumps back in his car, races back towards the Daisy Queen.

Before he gets to the Daisy Queen on Highway 61, that Cadillac goes flying by towards Memphis.

He said, estimated 80 miles an hour.

So I guess the word got out pretty quick.

Yes.

The piece itself is quite a collectible piece as well.

As you said, it's an advertising piece, and it probably dates to the late 1940s.

It's painted wood pulp, and it is the safe-t cup.

The safe-t cup was cone, which had a cut off bottom.

Let's just say it didn't have the Elvis Presley signatures on it, even as just an advertising piece, even in this condition, which is, it's a little bit worn, I would say it's probably $800 to $1,200.

But if you add in the two signatures at auction, a conservative estimate, I would say somewhere in the region of $3,000 to $5,000.

Okay.

Very collectible indeed.

Yeah, that's great.

♪ ♪ They're very long pearls that my mother had that I believe came from a friend of hers.

And this has a jewelry store box, but that may mean nothing.

(laughs) Her friend was quite well to do.

So we don't know if these are fake or if they're the real thing.

This is a, a barley fork.

My stepdad picked it up in upstate New York in the '70s or '80s.

It's Amish-made.

And when my parents did a cross country move, the appraiser for their estate said, like, this was the most interesting thing they had, so.

We actually found it at a garage sale in Bella Vista.

And I guess the woman had had it there for several days, and nobody had bought it, and we fell in love with it.

It had to go home with us.

She said that her father-in-law had brought it back from Japan after the war.

Well, this piece is clearly Japanese.

This is a type called Sumida Gawa ware, which was made for export only starting in about 1895.

It's characterized by all of these bright colors and these applied figures, but it's usually small.

I've seen large ones with monkeys applied over the surface, but never one with this design.

It's characterized by all of these marvelous applied figures.

You have rakans, lohans, Buddhist monks, in conversation with each other.

You have them holding pagodas, tapping each other on the shoulder.

They all look like they're in a certain degree of pain.

So perhaps that's why...

They do, yeah.

...she didn't sell it for a number of days.

There is a signature plaque.

At first, I thought it was by Inoue Ryosai, but it's actually by one of his students who worked in his factory at around 1900 by the name of Ishiguro Koko.

Oh, okay.

It's really an interesting, uh, profile.

Not too much is known about this character, except that he won a prize for a large vase of 500 of these characters.

Oh, wow.

This is undoubtedly a scaled-down version, but it's amazing, tour de force piece.

How much did you pay for this?

We bought it for $150.

Well, at auction, conservatively, today, you would be looking at somewhere between $6,000 and $10,000.

Oh, wow.

(chuckling): Really good investment for $150.

(chuckles) But it will stay at the house.

(both chuckle) It's got a home with us for sure.

GUEST: Back in 1961, in Mexico City in the summer, saw this print and met the artist, invited me to come to his studio at his home and see his printmaking.

Just had a nice conversation with him and purchased it from him at that time.

He was living in Mexico between 1959 and '63, and we just happened to be there at the same time and ran into him.

APPRAISER: Walter Williams, Jr.

He's a wonderful artist, painter, and printmaker, an African American artist born in Brooklyn, who traveled internationally, and he was in Mexico for a relatively brief period of time before settling in Denmark.

He's one of my favorite artists.

This is such a great example of his work.

We don't often see works that he made in Mexico.

No.

So this is a color woodcut.

It's dated in 1961, titled "Boy Laughing."

And it's inscribed "artist proof," so we know it's a proof outside of an edition.

He painted images of his childhood, and-and this print includes an image of a young boy, and it's really a joyous, innocent image of his childhood.

And that's really what he settled into in the '60s.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

He came to art relatively late after his military service.

He studied art in Brooklyn in the 1950s, and then he died in 1998.

And his studio burned in Copenhagen in the '80s, and a lot of his work is lost.

And I, I was excited to see this print because I haven't seen this print before.

Hm.

And so I think some of the images he made in Mexico are still coming out of the woodwork, and this is one of them.

Mm-hmm.

The colors are beautiful, the reds and pinks are vibrant.

We don't know the full edition size, but they're often very small.

Some of these woodcuts are editions of only ten.

So, this may be just a handful of these impressions.

Do you remember what you paid for it?

I'm thinking it was $90, in that range.

At auction, it should bring between $3,000 and $5,000.

Hm.

It certainly could sell more on a good day.

Great.

I'm proud to own it.

(both chuckle) ♪ ♪ AUSTEN BARRON BAILLY: At Crystal Bridges, we strive to tell a multifaceted story of American art, and that really includes the achievements and contributions of women artists to the larger arc of art and the American experience.

PEÑA: One such artist is Amy Sherald, who became famous for painting the Smithsonian commission portrait of Former First Lady Michelle Obama.

BAILLY: The acquisition of Amy Sherald's "Precious Jewels by the Sea," was an opportunity to demonstrate the importance of an artist like Sherald working today, and the ways in which she's depicting Americans.

Amy Sherald has captured four teenagers at the beach in a moment of statuesque classicism.

She's made this ordinary moment in their life... ...monumental.

What I also love about this painting is that Amy Sherald talks about it as an expression of freedom to paint whoever you want at whatever scale.

And these Black Americans at the beach give you a window onto something you don't always see.

GUEST: My daddy bought this ring for my mom after, um, she fell into the, uh, Arkansas River off of our houseboat.

The Delta Queen was docking at the Island Harbor Marina in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

And we were docking our houseboat, and Mama fell in, and she couldn't swim.

And the undercurrent pulled her under, and she didn't come back up.

And so we were all panicking and we thought she was drowning.

And finally, daddy and my brothers jumped in, and I jumped in, and we found her, and we pulled her back up.

And daddy was so upset, he sold the house boat the next day, and bought this ring for my mother.

And we used to always kid her, saying, "Mama, you're wearing our houseboat."

(soft chuckle) And we were just glad to have our mother safe and sound, you know?

Daddy got this ring because he had a good friend.

His name was Zappy, who his girlfriend was trying to get him to give her this ring.

Zappy told daddy, "I've got to sell this ring before this woman makes me marry her," and so daddy went over to Zappy's and bought the ring the next day.

What year did this happen in?

This was back in about the 1980s.

What did he pay for the ring?

Daddy gave Zappy $5,000 for the ring.

My mom, she enjoyed this ring so much.

She would take it to her little luncheons and wear it, and just, you know, "la dee da."

And she wanted me to have it, and she wanted to pass it down to my-my daughter.

Mama had passed away about 20 years ago, and I've been wearing it ever since.

I know my mother is smiling down from heaven.

Just means so much to me that this ring is on this show today.

It just breaks my heart that this ring is on this show today.

It's really a spectacular and comfortable piece of jewelry.

It's platinum, from the 1950s.

It's probably made right here in America.

It's a beautifully made mounting with round, brilliant cut stones that graduate.

The stone in the center is a very clean, brilliant cut diamond, almost 3.5 carats.

Wow.

It's also slightly fluorescent, so if we had a sunnier day than we had today, it would really pop.

I'm calculating the carat weight of the side, of the smaller stones between the round and the baguette cut stones at around 1.8 carats or a 1.80.

So the ring has a total carat weight above five carats.

A retail value today for this ring is in the range of $60,000 to $70,000.

Geez-o-Pete-o.

(laughs) Oh wow!

Man.

I better get some insurance on it.

(laughs) GUEST: It's an Arnold Palmer original putter, and it is autographed by Arnold Palmer by engraving.

My father was a physician, and a relative of Arnold Palmer's was a patient of his.

So he had the idea and he bought the putter.

He had an engraving tool already, and his, uh, relative came in for a visit.

He gave the putter and the engraving tool to her and said, "Would you take these home to your dad and ask him to sign them?"

She brought 'em back, and we got 'em for Christmas, and... (chuckles) it was a good Christmas.

How many of these did he do?

He did three-- I have two brothers and we each got one.

It says, "To Jerry, good luck, Arnold Palmer."

And did it bring you good luck?

Have you used this?

Uh, I'm a lousy golfer.

Palmer-- he was the first television golf icon.

Mm-hmm.

Played in the late '50s, early '60s.

He won the Masters four times.

He won the British Open twice.

He won the U.S. Open once.

He made golf cool and sexy.

And because of that, you know, he developed this huge legion of fans.

They even had a name called Arnie's Army.

Right.

I'm guessing that he must have loved this project, to bring this home and actually engrave this himself.

He signed thousands upon thousands upon thousands of signatures.

And his signature can be bought, really, for about anywhere between $50 and $150.

But this club is special.

And the other two clubs are special.

We don't know of any other clubs that were ever signed by Palmer with an engraving tool.

So if I were going to put an auction estimate on this, I would say $3,000 to $5,000.

Okay.

(chuckles) Very good.

Best Christmas present ever.

You betcha.

I would probably insure it for close to $10,000.

I will take care of that when I get home.

♪ ♪ Our family brought this piece with them when they came from Lithuania in about 1905.

If they brought it with them, it must be something kind of important.

Or it was important to them.

I'm assuming it's from the late 1800s.

It could be older.

We'll see.

GUEST: And it's got a Thomas Hart Benton signature.

This piece was given to my father in the late '70s by a friend of his who was acquainted with Thomas Hart Benton's widow.

This is Harry Truman.

PRODUCER: Where's the rest of him?

(laughs) I guess he didn't get that far.

GUEST: My mother had an aunt who had a husband who had a whole collection of naval books.

Medical books, he was a physician and a naval officer.

When my aunt died, she got a bunch of his books.

This pamphlet was tucked into a book about a World War I soldier.

It is the life story, as dictated, by Venture Smith, and he was a slave.

One of his owners, the third owner, told him he could buy his way to freedom.

And he bought his way to freedom.

This is one of the earliest narratives written by an enslaved person that was ever done in the United States.

Now this 1835 edition is a second edition.

The first was done in Connecticut in 1798.

This pamphlet was published by his descendants.

Venture Smith originally lived in West Africa.

He was six years old, there was a war, his tribe was invaded.

They captured him, took him, put him on a slave ship.

The slave ship stopped in the Caribbean.

Most of the people enslaved were sold.

One of the people on the boat bought him.

They bought him for some rum and cloth.

Not only did they take his freedom, they took his name, also.

When he was a young child in Africa, his name was Broteer Furro.

And then his name Venture came because the person who bought him says, "This is a business venture."

That's where his first name came from.

Hm.

Hm.

Later in life, his last person who owned him was Smith, and that's where he took the name Smith from.

And this narrative tells about his life being enslaved.

He was brought to New England.

You think about slavery, and normally, you think of the South.

He went through two owners.

He married, he had children, they got separated.

The third owner, who was in Connecticut, allowed him-- and the fact that you even have to say, "allowed him"-- to work and earn money.

And eventually he earned enough money that he was able to buy his freedom.

Then he was able to buy his wife and his children's freedom.

He actually became fairly successful.

He had 130 acres of land in Connecticut.

Mm.

Yeah.

He had three houses.

At the very last paragraph, he is telling how he was cheated, how people took advantage of him, how he won and lost land.

But he basically said he came out of it well.

And then there's a sentence in there, and he said, "My freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal."

Have you ever done anything about value?

I spoke with a collector, and he said, about $1,000.

There are a few known copies in libraries and institutions.

When I looked up sales records, the first edition, the 1798 edition, there was one copy that was sold in the last hundred years.

Wow.

I looked up the 1835 copy, and there were no copies sold in the last hundred years.

On a retail level, this pamphlet is probably $15,000 to $20,000.

Wow.

Cool.

He was a very eloquent man.

GUEST: Came from my grandmother.

She was French, Grandfather was German.

Don't know how far it goes back after that.

It's my ex-husband's family's, and it was his grandparents', and it hung in their parlor forever.

And then divorced, then I got it.

So I'm here for my children to see if it's worth anything.

If it's worth anything, he buys lunch and I buy the drinks.

So it's a win-win.

GUEST: This is a sculpture that my dad, somewhere in about early '70s, mid-'70s, he sculpted out of laminated maple.

He would take and laminate several pieces of wood that we actually got as... from-from his work.

He used to work in a cabinet shop.

And so he would take laminated pieces, glue 'em together, put 'em under a bumper jack, and leave 'em, let 'em sit there overnight.

And then he would begin to carve his wood and he would create different things.

And this is probably sculpture number three or four.

I've been collecting folk art since 1970, so over 50 years.

And this book comes out in 1974.

And one of the pieces that your dad made was in this book.

And I believe it was a sculpture of your grandfather.

That's right.

And where is that piece now?

It is actually at the Little Rock Arts Center, and it's-it's part of their permanent collection.

Uh, after that, he really never knew how to get his artwork out there to show people.

So a lot of people didn't really know that it existed.

This is a story, and I wanted to tell it... Yeah.

...that is repeated time and time again... Yeah.

...throughout the country, of these local artisans that are very, very talented.

Yeah.

Your dad knew what to do with wood.

Yeah.

I had read that your father actually liked to draw in high school.

Yes, that's correct.

And he did drawings of flames, of fire, and of taffy pulling.

Yes, movement, everything-thing that moved.

Kind of interesting, yes.

So here he is actually trying to replicate that movement.

Yes.

In his pieces of sculpture.

And this wonderful female figure here leading up to the head, and so much movement going on.

Yes.

If he was able to be in an area where he could sell his artwork, clearly that would have been his career.

Putting a value on this is difficult because no pieces have ever sold.

So we would have to look at this and put an arbitrary decorative value number on it of about $2,000.

All right, that sounds good.

Well, I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

He would usually carve at night.

We'd wake up the next morning and have a bunch of shavings all over the floor.

That's wonderful.

It is a Salvador Dalí artist proof.

I bought it from a, uh, private seller a few years ago, paid about $150 for it.

I believe it's called "The Alchemist."

I don't know what's going on in it.

(chuckles) There's a lot.

GUEST: This is a brooch that belonged to my great-grandmother, who was born in the 1800s.

She lived to be almost 100.

My mother gave one to me and one to my sister.

Mine looks the same, just a different color.

I'm thinking maybe from the 1940s, but I'm not sure.

I've worn mine a few times, and I-I think they're beautiful.

I brought, uh, an Erna Rosenstein painting.

I know that E-Erna Rosenstein was a Holocaust survivor.

It's painted in 1955, we've had it for about 37 years.

It was from an auction house where they were auctioning stuff for a charity.

Erna Rosenstein was really a very important Polish avant-garde artist.

She was born in 1913 in what is currently known as the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

She studied to be an artist.

She was very taken by surrealism.

She spent a lot of time in Europe learning how to paint from some of the great masters of modern art.

In 1939, she went back to Poland to be with her family.

When the Nazis invaded Poland, her family got rather nervous about how things were going to go.

She and her mother moved to the Jewish ghetto.

Her father went into hiding.

In 1942, he was able to secure some false identity documents so that they could try to escape to Warsaw.

Sadly, um, they had a very tragic, um, experience while they were trying to escape.

Her mother and father were murdered...

Right.

...in a forest.

She was there.

She was wounded in the whole experience, but she did escape.

And she spent the next several years living under false identities and moving around, trying to just survive the war, which she ultimately did, she was a Holocaust survivor.

She did really spend the rest of her career using those experiences in her art.

And we see some of that in this painting.

I remember they would say they were going to get showered.

They enter here and they got burnt.

And they also did experimentations on the bodies and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think we have some real tough imagery here...

Right.

That-that I'm sure she didn't like reliving as she was painting.

But-but it was something she felt really strongly that she wanted to communicate through her brush and-and get that story out.

She came back to painting in 1945, but nothing before the war survived, none of her art.

Okay.

So really the earliest paintings we see are from 1945 on.

She went back to spend some time in Paris.

She met her husband in the, in the late '40s.

His name was Artur Sandauer, he was a literary critic.

And eventually she made a life as an artist.

But mostly in Poland.

She did take a break from her artistic, kind of, forward-facing career during the social realism period from '49 to '55, where she couldn't really paint necessarily what she wanted in the public.

So she just kind of took a break from her forward-facing art career.

And then in 1957, she regrouped, and made the Kraków Group together, again, with nine artists.

And they came back on the scene with the first modern art show, really in the post-Stalin era.

This painting is from 1955.

This is an oil on canvas painting.

It sustained a little bit of damage.

Right.

But all things considered, it's not too bad.

Have you had this appraised?

No.

Do you have any idea what it's worth?

Mm-mm.

If you had to guess what you paid for it 37 or so years ago, what do you think that might have been?

I was thinking $700.

If this were to come up to auction today, we would estimate this painting at $50,000 to $70,000.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

(sniffles) (voice trembling): Thank you.

(exhales) Wow.

PEÑA: Like any art lover, the museum's founder, Alice Walton, is drawn to art that evokes a certain feeling.

And one of these pieces is an untitled work from 1952 by Joan Mitchell.

ALICE WALTON: Joan Mitchell, she kept up with the boys, shall we say.

I had been looking for a Joan Mitchell for a long time.

And we finally found the right one.

And I can't leave anything untitled.

So I called it "Creating Harmony from Chaos."

And there are times in my life and probably everybody's life when we need to figure out how to do that.

So it's been a really special painting for me and still is.

PEÑA: Titled or untitled, this dynamic large-scale work is emblematic of Mitchell's abstract style of colorful, gestural brushstrokes against a white background.

GUEST: This was a carving.

My husband's family had it, and they all chose to pick 'em, and we got the last pick.

But I feel like it's the best pick.

My husband's great-great-uncle, his name was Abraham Lincoln Hinrichs.

He had a boys club.

And he carved totem poles with those boys.

And then he got asked to do it for the Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City.

And he made three totem poles for the capitol.

Yeah.

He was asked to do one of the life of Mark Twain.

Mm-hmm.

And one of Truman's, because Truman was from Missouri.

Right, okay.

And then he got to bring a personal one.

And this is from the personal one.

He did this in 1940.

It's probably carved of cedar.

It's wonderfully stylized.

It's the essence of folk art.

So you have these clasped hands, these hands that are shaking, white painted against this black heart with a red surround.

And it... the surface is wonderful.

On the back, there are these initials.

Yes.

And-and what do you think that those are?

We think that those are some of the boys that helped him.

Also I love these signs from the club.

And he was teaching young men how to operate in the world as gentlemen, to be polite, how to work hard, how to get up when you fall.

All those good things that-that I-I taught my son, that we-we teach our sons and daughters.

"Be quick to forgive a guy who says," quote, "I am sorry."

That's pretty good.

And "learn to apologize now and have friends when you are old."

That's good.

There were so many about just life lessons and how to live and how to love.

And this would have been in the '30s and '40s.

Yeah.

They were ages 13 to 18 could come to the club.

Mm-hmm.

And he, if you're gonna hang out here, you're gonna learn a trade, you're gonna learn a skill, you're gonna learn manners.

He didn't let 'em, he didn't let 'em be ugly to each other.

That's great.

And they were all ethnicities.

We're very proud of the work he did.

(chuckles) It's a pretty nice package.

You can insure a group like this easily for $3,000.

Oh, wow.

(laughs) Serious.

Just with...

Okay.

That's fantastic.

Wow.

I mean, this is a huge glass bowl.

Tell-tell me where it came from.

What-what a color.

Um, actually bought it at the Goodwill.

I love the reds and the oranges.

And it reminds me of fire.

And my son loves fire.

And so I thought, "Oh, I'll give that to him, "and that'll be a good little junk bowl for him, for his keys and stuff."

Awesome.

And are there any marks on it?

Have you looked to see if it's signed at all?

Well, somewhere on that orange, see right there.

Oh, mm-kay.

All right.

Have you been-been able to figure it out?

No, not at all.

Okay.

It looks like Amanda Brisbane.

Okay.

So, she is a 20th century studio art glass maker.

This is sand-cast glass.

She was born in the 1960s, around '65.

She died 2016.

And this is dated 2015.

So it's late in, uh, in her career.

She has some collectability.

She was a British artist, studied in England and America.

And if this came on the market today at auction, it would probably be about $800 to $1,200.

Oh!

(chuckling): Pretty good.

So how much did you pay?

$20.

Oh!

You did well.

Yeah.

$20 at Goodwill.

(chuckles) Oh, my goodness.

Really?

That much?

That's pretty good, a good eye.

GUEST: This is my Welmon Sharlhorne.

It's called "Time for Man and Beast."

And it kind of reflects how unusual life Welmon's had.

He was incarcerated in Louisiana as a child and was released from prison in his mid-teens.

Did some more petty crimes, and they put him in jail for another 20 years.

Oh, my goodness.

When he was in jail, he started creating art.

And he would give it to the other prisoners, and some of it ended up in the Smithsonian Institute of Art.

Welmon Sharlhorne was born in Louisiana in 1952, and a hardscrabble life for an African American boy growing up in rural Louisiana.

I mean, he, he had so many strikes against him.

The first pieces that he did, he would create on scraps of paper, anything that they gave him.

What I like about it so much is it has all of the key marks of classic outsider art.

You have the repetition.

There's a lot going on with it.

There's so much going on with it.

And that's what I find so interesting about outsider art.

It's marker on, probably, a cardboard.

Signed center right.

He's still alive.

And he's an artist that has grown in appreciation since he's been on the market.

I was looking at some auction records, and ten, 12 years ago, they were estimated at $200 to $300 and sold for $200.

As you mentioned, he's in the Smithsonian Museum.

But he's also in the Visionary Museum in Baltimore, which is one of the ultimate museums for outsider art.

This one, because it's quite large and has everything you want to see in a piece by him, I would say at auction, I would estimate it between $2,000 and $3,000.

That's fantastic.

What'd you pay for it?

$700.

Good job and good eye.

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

GUEST: My father did research in tropical diseases.

And we lived in Japan, and he would travel around Southeast Asia.

This came home from one of his trips.

It would have been in the '60s.

This is a Himalayan parcel gilt bronze figure of Amitayus, who's one of the incarnations of Buddha, and it dates to the 17th century.

Okay.

And it's likely from Tibet.

You can see that this looked different when it was originally made.

You have these gilded areas here.

And there's some remnants of the gilding on the arm and the legs, and the rest of it is worn away.

And that's because this is an object of veneration.

This was something that people were holding in high regard, and they would handle because they wanted some of the auspiciousness to rub off on them.

Mm-hmm.

The good favors, the good luck.

The entire thing would have been resplendent with this brilliant gold surface.

We're also noticing the damage here around the base.

Right.

From the dusting.

It looks like it's been dropped a few times.

Did some of that happen under your tenure or...

When I, yeah, when I was dusting it... ...dad's?

...I, it slipped, yeah.

But I bet...

I don't dust very often.

(laughs) Let's look at the back.

And we can see also areas that once would have been obscured, but also dark areas, which may be smoke or it may be pigments that have become discolored.

And I'm gonna turn this up upside down so everybody can see, really, how much wear there is around the edge, how dented.

Mm-hmm.

Is it something you would ever sell, or you... No, you know, I-I... ...just want to insure it?

No, I can't, because it's a family thing.

It's a memory of my, my sweet parents, so.

If you were going to insure this, a figure in the $7,000 range would be appropriate.

Oh, golly.

Okay.

Because my dad, I know, didn't pay a whole lot for these.

I mean, he would come back from trips, and my mother would say, "How much did you spend on that?"

And he'd say, "I forgot."

(laughs) GUEST: This little guy sat on a counter at Joplin Union Depot back in the... '40s, '50s, and there was a telephone beside him that you would pick up and call Hertz Rent-A-Car to "Why walk?

Rent a car."

And they would come pick you up at the station and bring you a car.

This bracelet was made by Elsa Freund, and she's from Eureka Springs.

That's where she worked.

And this is a great example because she was into wire work, and also she was a ceramicist.

So she took the glass and embedded it into clay.

I would say, in a retail setting, you're probably looking at $1,500 to $2,000 today.

Oh, wow.

Isn't that great?

That's, that-that's wonderful.

That's wonderful.

GUEST: I was at an estate sale, and I was loaded down with items, standing in line to pay for them, And then I saw this out of the corner of my eye, hanging on the wall, and I said, forget this stuff.

And I grabbed it off the wall and paid for it.

It was like, for $45.

Harvey Joiner is the artist of this oil on board.

Harvey Joiner was born 1852.

He died in 1932.

But he was born just north of the Ohio River, north of Louisville.

He was actually born in Charlestown, Indiana.

He made most of his career in Louisville, though.

And the vast majority of his subjects are of Cherokee Park in Louisville, Kentucky.

They were almost always these interior forest subjects, and they're, really, little jewels.

It's probably a summer scene, which is desirable for Joiner also, but it's definitely 100% Cherokee Park.

The work is signed here in the lower right, faintly and in green, so it kind of blends in with the background, which was typical of the artist.

He was very prolific.

But Kentuckians are, are rabid about their Kentucky regional artists.

And Joiner is sort of at the very top.

At auction, a reasonable, conservative estimate would be in the $3,000 to $5,000 range.

Nice.

(chuckling) Pretty good for $45.

(chuckles) PEÑA: On the three and a half miles of trails at Crystal Bridges, there are many art installations.

One is a huge hit with art enthusiasts and arachnophiles.

ROD BIGELOW: We have an amazing work by Louise Bourgeois called "Maman," which is Mommy in French.

She made spiders across her life as an artist, and it is really a tribute to her mother.

She adored her mother.

She saw her mother as a caregiver, a weaver.

This "Maman" sculpture is 30 feet tall and 33 feet wide.

So it's a gargantuan spider that is somewhat intimidating, but also welcoming at the same time.

And it sort of observes and invites people to come experience it every day.

GUEST: This guitar belonged to my father-in-law.

From what we know, he picked it up at a used guitar shop in Joplin, Missouri, for just a few hundred bucks.

He played it for a long time.

And then I think he just put it up.

And then in 2011, it went through the Joplin tornado.

His house was completely annihilated, but the guitar was still in the case.

Still looking good.

Did the case get wet?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

(chuckles) Okay.

We looked at the serial number, and we confirmed that the... it was made in 1955.

It's a Gibson.

It's called a 160E.

This is an acoustic that was set up for electric.

They've made this guitar electrified like this in 1954 and '55.

In those two years, the top was made of solid spruce.

After that, they started using plywood.

They quit making 'em with the solid tops because when they hooked 'em up to the amplifiers, there was too much feedback.

One of the things I love about this is that it's all original, and it's what I call a player's guitar.

It shows all the wear.

Just think about all the notes... Yeah.

...and the songs that have been played on that guitar.

The average retail on something like this would be around $6,000 or $8,000.

Wow.

And it could be as high as $12,000 retail.

But it's a very rare survivor, and I thank you so much for bringing it in.

Well, thank you.

My husband's gonna be thrilled.

GUEST: It's Sequoyah Orphanage Training School pottery.

After forced removal, uh, of the Cherokee Nation from the East Coast to modern-day Oklahoma, it left a lot of parentless children, orphans.

And so Cherokees have a long history of taking care of the orphans with an orphanage asylum, and then later the Sequoyah Orphanage Training School.

My own parents went to Sequoyah boarding school, which is an Indian boarding school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

There's a direct connection between the role that I have at Cherokee Nation.

I'm Cherokee Nation's delegate to Congress.

It is a position that is mandated in our removal treaty, the very treaty that led to, unfortunately, so many parentless children.

I became familiar with it because my aunt had a collection of it, and it-it was so rare to find.

There are reproductions.

But I started collecting the originals, and it really is in honor of my parents.

But it also, it honors the past because each piece uniquely has the name of the student... Wow, fantastic.

...of the orphan who made each piece.

And so it also gives them visibility.

They're not forgotten.

So between 1938 and 1943, all of this pottery was being used to sell to help raise money for the orphans.

And also what I find really interesting about a lot of the figurative works, you see, this is sort of a stylized dog... Mm-hmm.

...and then frogs and then birds.

They're a vessel, but they also are animated with the creature.

Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

But some of this feels a little bit more like early prehistoric.

Yeah.

Like almost Caddoan.

When I look at these, I see each one of them different.

Mm-hmm.

I'm seeing that they're all red, though.

Mm-hmm.

Did they come in other colors?

They do come in other colors.

I have dark browns, blues and whites.

There's also green and yellow.

I'm gonna just take a look at the bottom of some of these.

Each one of them is signed by-- this one, Mary Watson.

Mm-hmm.

And some of them were last names like Mankiller... Mm-hmm.

...and Johnson.

And many of these people are-- these are Cherokee names?

Mm-hmm.

Now, in terms of assessing these values, they turn up at obscure auctions, and the predominance of them are coming out of Oklahoma and the Midwest.

The small frog here, it's just wonderful.

He's got a lot of character... Mm-hmm.

...ver-- tons of personality.

And I would give that a retail value of about $450.

Mm-hmm.

The wonderful manifestation of how this is built, it's got some modernity to it.

Mm-hmm.

It feels deco, but always essentially Cherokee and Native American.

Mm-hmm.

So I just love that it just finds its way back to its source and its roots.

Something like that is probably $650 to $750.

Mm-hmm.

The wonderful frog here, it's about $600.

Mm-hmm.

So it's just fantastic.

Now, the duck, which I really like a lot... Mm-hmm.

...because it almost has these very...

Yes.

...beautiful, almost feels like basketware... Mm-hmm.

...up at the top, but it's also pottery.

And I would say something like that would be around $900.

Wow.

And the fantastic original dog vessel, I would say, is probably worth about $2,500 to $3,000.

Wow.

But to me, it's about culture...

Absolutely.

...it's about history.

Me, too.

And it's about your vision, and I love it.

I think what you're doing this here means a lot to...

Thank you.

...not only your own tribe... Mm-hmm.

...but the artisans... Mm-hmm.

...to bring them to light and to let people know that these are really exceptional parts of American history.

GUEST: My father was a-a professor, and they made a trip to Iran in the '70s to, hopefully, start a university extension there.

And they went to the bazaars that were underground to buy souvenirs for their wives.

The shopkeeper said, "What brought you to my country?"

And he said, "Well, we're gonna start a university."

And he's like, "Education is a wonderful thing."

And he said, "I want you to have this as a gift."

And so it's been in our family for 50 years.

I got it at a flea market, $20.

I thought it was worth more than that.

PRODUCER: Do you know how old it is?

No.

Not right now, though.

It works.

Well, I feel like I have the, uh, dynamic duo... (laughs) ...of brothers, collectors, so lay it on me.

What's the story?

Well, we started doing this about, um, gosh, about 45 years ago.

It started out very simply.

He was actually in the Air Force, and one year, he came up for Christmas, and I was a young teenager, and he bought me a box of comics.

Well, then the next year, he bought a second box.

And we put them together, and we thought, well, let's see if we can start filling in some of these numbers that we're missing.

Yeah.

And then from there, it just went...

Grew and grew.

...crazy.

Do you remember what you paid?

It's probably $100 or less for every single one of them on the table.

I'm just curious, out of the whole selection we have here today, did you guys have a favorite or particular book that you thought was your best one?

Uh, just from quality and cleanness, probably the "Fantastic Four #1."

November, 1961, "Fantastic Four" is the birth of the Silver Age of Marvel comics.

Everything shown is between 1961 and 1966, the number one grail of the Silver Age of comics.

"Amazing Fantasy 15," 1962.

First true appearance of Spider-Man.

Early Silver Age comics are known for Marvel chipping.

When you see this loss along the outer edge here... Mm-hmm.

...that is a condition that pre-'65 Marvel comics are prone to.

And truthfully, right now, I will say it's your best book on the board.

Wow.

Really.

Even with the condition.

Yeah.

Condition is terrible.

(laughing) (chuckling): It's-it's bad, okay?

I mean, numerically speaking, it's gonna be a 1.0, but as it sits, prior to grading, I would say this comic alone is gonna be in that $10,000 to $15,000 range.

Ah, yeah.

Whoa.

"Incredible Hulk #1."

I hate to say, it's roached.

You know, it's... Yup.

(chuckling): It's destroyed.

It's been loved, it's been abused.

But even as a 1.0, that's gonna be a $4,000 to $6,000 comic... Hm.

...any day of the week.

Wow, wow.

That "X-Men #1" there, it is nicer shape than the "Amazing Fantasy #15" and the "Hulk #1."

That's gonna come in right around $7,000 to $10,000.

Oh, wow.

I-I didn't expect that.

I threw you a little curveball-- I wanted to go down before I went back up again, okay?

(chuckling) We haven't even gone across the bottom.

First "Ant-Man," first "Doctor Strange," first "Sgt.

Fury," first "Thor," first "Avengers," "Spider-Man #50,"-- first Kingpin, origin story retold, and "Spider-Man #14," first appearance of the Green Goblin.

But now, all the buildup, I got to get to this FF #1, okay?

When I saw this on the top of your stack, and I saw the condition of it, my eyes popped out of my head.

'Cause I said, "Wow."

I think I noticed that.

Yeah, no, I-I almost had a heart attack when you whipped that out.

It's not every day you see... Yeah.

a "Fantastic Four #1" in that type of shape.

Yeah.

It's almost like one in a million in a high-grade condition.

It looks great.

But when you get up close with it, she's had a lot of work.

We're talking moderate even to extensive restoration on this book.

Okay.

Oh.

Here, along the staple, we have tear seals with color touch.

So these were originally tears coming off the staple from reading... Ah.

...that somebody glued and then put in the color touch afterwards to blend the condition.

Down here, you have the tiniest bit of paper that was added.

Now we're gonna look at the back on it for you, all right?

All this paper here was added, color touch.

Here: one, two, three, four, five, six, if not more, tears that were glued and sealed.

You can see that.

And your whole spine was reinforced with glue.

Oh.

Paper added, and paint added along the spine.

Mmm.

So, numerically speaking, we would say it would grade a 7.0 to a 7.5.

But it's a 7.0, 7.5 with extensive restoration.

Less that, yeah.

So this comic, in the shape today at auction, is $7,000 to $10,000.

Okay.

If it was in this shape original, it would be a $40,000 to $50,000 comic.

Wow.

Yeah.

And now here's the real curveball.

This book was worth more money unrestored today, looking beat-up and natural... Really!

...compared to being restored.

Wow.

Yes.

It'd be a $8,000 to $12,000 comic where looking pretty and restored, it's the $7,000 to $10,000.

Okay.

So as a package today, if all of these were to be professionally graded, conservatively for the group, we'd be looking at $60,000 to $90,000 at auction.

Wow.

Okay.

Nice.

That's still good.

That's still good.

Yeah, we'll take it.

(laughs) That's good.

We'll take it.

Thank you for bringing it in today, guys.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Travis.

Enjoyed it.

Thank you.

(chuckling) PEÑA: And now it's time for the "Roadshow" Feedback Booth.

I brought the first coconut husker to the "Antiques Roadshow," and, uh, I don't think it's coming back.

(chuckling): No, it's going back with you.

And I brought an oil painting.

It is not a Dutch master, but I love it anyways.

(chuckles) This one, unfortunately, we have a Jimi Hendrix-autographed magazine from 1965.

Found out it's a fake.

So that wasn't so exciting.

But this painting, the Johann Berthelsen, is an insurance value of $20,000.

So we are very excited.

These right here are binoculars.

We thought they were used for engineering.

And, uh, they were actually made by an opera company for opera viewing.

And it's worth about $30.

I've got a painting that I think says Wilkins on it.

On the back it says, "VW Beetle from Venice Beach.

"Pink Floyd drove it here today.

"Concert tonight in Neon Canyon.

"Janis Joplin is on her way.

To Carolyn by Chuck Wilkins."

And he said if I could get a band member from Pink Floyd to verify this, up three to four times in the value.

So, please let me know, Pink Floyd out there.

It's a, uh, owl, uh, glass, uh... Pitcher, Pitcher.

Uh, mid-century and, uh, came from Austria.

And, uh, it's worth $75.

And it was found in the trash.

We're not rich, but "Antiques Roadshow" was a hoot.

Oh, God.

(laughing) That's... (laughing) PEÑA: Thanks for watching.

See you next time on "Antiques Roadshow."