RECUT: Bonanzaville, Part 1

♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: "Antiques Roadshow Recut" is gathering a bumper crop of treasures at Bonanzaville in West Fargo, North Dakota.

It was the first antique I ever bought.

♪ ♪ (people laughing in background) You okay?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ PEÑA: "Antiques Roadshow Recut" is revisiting our 2019 stop to Bonanzaville, U.S.A. Bonanzaville was named for the so-called bonanza farms that sprang up around this part of the Midwest in the late 1800s.

And it was wheat that brought great wealth to those who owned those farms.

Excitement is growing today as "Roadshow" fans share stories about their treasures.

Take a look.

Roadshow!

MAN: Roadshow!

♪ ♪ MAN: I brought a clock that my grandma gave me when we bought our first house, which was a mid-century house, so she thought a mid-century clock would go well with that, so...

They're a lot noisier than what we're used to at this point in our lives.

I use it as a dog bed, not a doll... A dog!

I use it for my dog.

You must have a small dog.

(laughing): Yes.

Oh, wow.

I love it.

Thank you for bringing it in.

Thank you.

MAN: I bought it at an estate sale in Minneapolis, approximately 40 years ago.

I brought it home, and we ran it for about...

I'd say one summer, and then took it down.

You were afraid it was going to get damaged?

Yeah, it... it looked sort of fragile, so we, uh, we just put it away, and it sat for 40 years in the garage.

This started out with somebody making something for pure entertainment, just to put it out in the yard and let the wind hit it.

And the reason things like this are somewhat rare is because they fall apart if you leave them out in the weather too long.

It's a nice, articulated, very compact form.

But the thing I like the most is this figure.

His coat is nicely sculpted.

You can see his face.

He looks a little bit like Abraham Lincoln, but as far as I know, Abraham Lincoln never wore a, a derby hat.

(laughs) Well, no conversation about a whirligig is complete without some action.

From here, you need to show us how this works.

Well, if the wind's blowing, and it will get going, it'll...

I love that.

He'll start cranking.

What'd you pay for it?

Not very much.

At the absolute most, it would have been five dollars.

It's got all the things that you look for in something like this, and some people might think, "Well, the figure is very well done.

The rest of this is very simplistic."

But I actually think the juxtaposition of those two things makes it more interesting.

The age you said was about 100 years old?

I would say 1900, 1925.

Those nails that are in there, they probably wouldn't have existed before 1890 or 1900.

Just in fabulous condition.

And I wish that we could say for sure who made it.

My guess is it was made wherever that estate was.

Was that estate in Minneapolis?

Yes, it was.

It takes a village to build a consensus sometimes on where you think values would be on something like this.

But the fact that it is so simple, and the fact that the figure is done so well, we feel like, in a retail setting, that this would be $2,000 to $3,000.

(chuckling): I find...

I find that hard to believe, but... that's great.

Earlier today in the parking lot, we really had him going with the breeze.

Well, he's still working.

Yup, works good, yup.

♪ ♪ You want to know that I don't know what this is, don't you?

I am not sure what I brought in today.

It's a what's-it that nobody that has seen it has been able to tell me exactly what it is for.

This is not a 1937 Dodgers ball.

BOTH: Okay.

All right?

It's much better than that.

This is a 1930s Yankee ball.

Yeah, okay!

Great!

Amazing!

Thank you!

(laughs) I brought a cup that I had purchased about 50 years ago in an antique shop in Georgetown, District of Columbia.

It was a present for my soon-to-be husband.

I paid about $50.

And I was told it was Vietnamese.

It was the first antique I ever bought, but I knew my husband-to-be was interested in antiques, so...

It just appealed to me-- the artistic design, the dragon handle.

I just liked it.

Well, what you've brought today is a really interesting and unusual example of a Chinese export Oh!

silver cup by Leeching in Guangdong, in Hong Kong.

So this qualifies as Qing Dynasty.

The form is very interesting in that it's very atypical of a form the Chinese would have been making for export to England or America.

And perhaps this was made for export to either the Turkish market or the Russian market.

So this is just a very odd vase-y form, uh, then with the attached dragon handle.

And you mentioned the scene drew you to it.

And what we have here is a very interesting interior and exterior scene, the interior showing preparations for a feast, and the exterior showing guests on their way to the feast.

The manner of decoration is what we call repoussé decoration.

And you can see, if I tilt this, that the decoration was done by punching the metal out.

And the silversmith marked his work, putting hallmarks on the bottom.

And the "LC" is for Leeching.

Examples come up from time to time on the secondary auction market, and can sometimes also be found in retail silver shops.

If this were in a retail silver shop today, I would expect them to have a price of $2,500 on it.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh!

(laughing): I'm so surprised.

My goodness.

Wonderful.

Well, I'm very pleased.

My husband was worth it and I'll keep it.

(laughs) Keep him.

And him.

(laughs) Very good.

♪ ♪ PEÑA: Bonanzaville, set on 12 acres of land, has over three dozen buildings open to the public.

All were relocated from towns across Cass County, North Dakota.

Among the first to arrive at Bonanzaville in the late 1960s was this cabin, built by farmers Helmer and Emma Habberstad out of oak logs in 1874.

♪ ♪ WOMAN: Charles White became part of my household.

My sister-in-law Maria gave these to me about a year ago.

She thought maybe I should just frame these and, and share them with my family members.

And I said, "No, "I think we should get more information about Charles White."

Well, you brought in two wonderful sets of prints by Charles White.

Charles White is really a fantastic American artist, an African-American artist.

And, and these are very good examples of his work.

Charles White is a pre-eminent modern American artist, and he was born in 1918 in Chicago.

He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a teenager.

Uh-huh.

And he rose to prominence, was a part of the WPA program.

He did mural paintings.

And then he became really known as a graphic artist.

His work is in many museum collections.

And he was celebrated during his lifetime, but just recently, he's risen to much greater prominence, well deserved.

He was a political artist, and he wanted to say more about the African-American experience, and with the struggles that they were going through, especially in the 1960s, when these were done.

These are reproduction prints.

They're offset lithographs of his drawings.

And they were printed in the early 1960s with his gallery, Heritage Gallery, and A.C.A.

Gallery in New York.

And he really wanted to make his work more available.

So these portfolios were printed to promote his work.

And you have two sets here.

We have a set of six and a set of ten.

Each image is a drawing he did from the time, from, like, the late 1950s and early '60s.

So we actually don't know how many of these are printed in each edition.

The numbers were quite large.

I imagine hundreds were printed.

The original drawings would be very large.

They were, like, four feet high, five feet wide.

Oh!

Artist reproductions usually don't rise to the value that they would be something you would see at an auction house or a gallery, but these were critical to Charles White's work.

And because of his significance, because of his importance now, these are highly collectible.

They are also pristine examples and the complete sets.

They're almost as if you obtained them the day they were issued in the '60s.

At auction today, the set of six I would estimate at $1,000 to $1,500, and the set of ten would reach $2,000 to $3,000 at auction.

Awesome, awesome.

Yeah.

That's good to know.

So this is a charming-looking scene.

What do you, what do you think's going on here?

I think this boy might be in a little bit of trouble.

Got his ball in the flower bed there.

And Mom doesn't look too happy.

Yeah, she looks none too pleased, she's got the wagging finger right there.

I'm sure, uh, many of us can relate to this scene from our childhood.

Uh-huh.

And tell me a little bit about the painting.

How, how did you come by it?

I bought it at a rummage sale a few years ago.

Okay.

Less than ten bucks.

And do you know who the artist is?

Andrew Loomis.

Andrew Loomis, yes.

It's signed quite clearly.

Right.

And he was best known for being an illustrator, but he was, actually, he was also very well known as a, as an educator.

Huh.

He wrote a series of books, how-to books.

The first one is "Fun with Your Pencil," I believe it was called.

And that was published in 1939.

So these books were really, really popular and influenced a whole generation of illustrators and art students about drawing, and how to do figure drawing, that kind of thing, so...

But what we're dealing with here is the illustration art side of his career.

And he was from New York state originally-- born there in 1892.

But mainly connected with Chicago.

Spent quite a lot of time there, set up his own design studio, his own, his own business there.

Uh, he'd previously worked in advertising for companies who worked with Coca-Cola, Lucky Strikes, um... Kellogg's-- all those sort of things.

But this one was probably done for a magazine.

We don't know which one.

Looking at the costume and just the overall feel of it, it may have been painted in the 1930s or so.

This is oil on canvas.

And it, it tells a very nice story here.

It's an interesting market for illustration art just now.

Uh, for many years, the American art market was really very much focused on 19th-century paintings-- you know, the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, that kind of thing.

And while there's still a lot of interest in those fields, they've kind of been taken over by Western art, modernism, and very much illustration art.

Led by the great titans of illustration art-- artists like Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth.

Now, Mr. Loomis isn't quite of that caliber, but he's still very well regarded.

You know, you could think of him as sort of second or third tier, perhaps, of illustration artists.

At auction, you should be looking at, comfortably, $4,000 to $6,000.

Nice!

Not bad, right?

Very nice.

Not a bad return.

That's awesome, thank you.

Good.

Well, I hope you're pleased with that.

Yes, very much.

I hope you continue to go to rummage sales.

Oh, definitely.

So it's Japanese.

Okay.

And it's silk, of course.

And these are, like, festival toys.

It's really sweet.

It reminds me of a modern-day computer game.

(laughs) It does look like it, yes?

Yeah.

Early 20th century, maybe about $30 to $50.

This is American.

Okay.

It's 14-karat white gold.

Probably early 20th century, but it's about...

I'd say just under a carat, and then you got about a quarter of a carat in stones going around the outside, as well.

♪ ♪ PEÑA: Old Abe the eagle was the iconic logo of the Case Company, Midwestern makers of threshers and other farming equipment for over a century.

This Old Abe was inspired by a real bird who was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.

That old bird, a symbol of patriotic zeal and fortitude, was named after President Abraham Lincoln.

♪ ♪ APPRAISER: Every once in a while, something just comes up to the table at Roadshow and I just start to giggle, because I see some really exciting things.

What did you bring in today?

This is a pencil vending machine that will actually print your name on the pencil.

Mm-hmm.

It's from about 1925.

I actually collect pencils.

I collect advertising pencils.

And so I found some from a fellow collector that said Vendex.

And I'm, like, "There's got to be a machine that goes along with this."

So I spent two or three years just looking for the machine, and finally found one.

And how long ago did you buy this?

It was about three years ago.

I paid $325 for it.

Now, pencil collecting is a very specific art.

How did you get into that?

When I was younger, I would tag along with my grandpa to flea markets.

And any time Grandpa would be buying something, it was something cheap for me to pick up at the same time.

And how many do you have now?

I have about 60,000.

And the other collectors, where do you in the hierarchy of collecting pencils?

I'd say I'm about in the middle.

There's, there's a few that have more than me, but mine, mine's getting up there.

So, doing research on this, I was looking at the patent.

I've seen two show up before.

Okay.

One has been in restored shape.

I have never seen one in original condition.

And the best that I can tell, this is all original.

Yes.

It has a few little replacement bits, but overall, it looks original.

The paint looks correct.

The glass in the front is perfect.

In this condition, unrestored, and, unfortunately, inoperable at the moment...

Right.

We'd be looking at around a $500 to $800 auction estimate.

Wow, that's awesome.

If it worked, I guess about $1,000, $1,200, top end.

But it's a just fun, exciting, weird little piece.

♪ ♪ This trunk we got from my grandma.

Apparently, her cousin had it, and they had it outside on the porch, and they had it full of feed for the cattle.

And then her cousin brought it in, and she scrubbed it up really good, and she put wheels on the bottom of it.

It's from Norway, and it's only worth about $600 now.

But he said it's really cool.

I brought in a Rolex watch that I had purchased while I was in the military.

I was stationed in Thailand from 1973 to 1975.

And while I was there, I flew on Air America Airlines and Continental Airlines, and I noticed that most of the pilots that were flying those aircraft wore Rolex watches, and I was intrigued by them.

I always wanted to purchase them, but they were very expensive.

Later, when I was transferred to another base, I did some scuba diving, and I knew that the Rolex watch was good for scuba diving.

I found this particular watch where I could afford it, and I never used it.

I looked at it and I said, "You know, this is really too nice to take down in salty water."

Yeah.

I just kept it.

After I got out of the service, I had other watches I wore and I just put this one into a safety deposit box.

It stayed there for 30 or 40 years.

I only took it out, like, two or three times to look at it, and that was about the extent of it before I brought it here.

What branch of service were you in?

I was in the United States Air Force.

I entered in 1971.

My draft number was seven.

That's a pretty low number, huh?

(chuckles) That's not really lucky in the, in the draft, right?

No.

When I found out about that, I either had to join the Air Force or another branch, or I was enlisted by the first of January.

And what'd you do in the service?

I worked in munitions, but there's, like, four different branches, and I worked in explosive ordnance disposal.

You bought this where?

Was it, was it at a military store?

I ordered it in November 1974 through the base exchange.

I believe it came in in April 1975.

The amount that you paid, you even got a ten percent discount.

It says $345.97.

Was that a lot of money in 1975 to you?

It was a lot of money for myself.

What were salaries back then?

It ranged between $300 and $400 a month, if I have it correct.

As you know, it's a Rolex.

This particular model is referred to as an Oyster Cosmograph.

They're also referred to as Daytonas.

This is a reference 6263.

You saved everything, which is really wonderful.

The warranty paper was never filled out and was never numbered, so you have, actually have a blank guarantee, which is quite unusual.

And even over here, this paper is blank.

A blank paper today is probably worth about $2,000, because it can be made to match any watch and add value to it, so guys would pay money to buy a blank paper.

You have the original Rolex brochure here for the Cosmograph.

You have two receipts-- the order receipt and your payment receipt here.

You have the original box.

Even the outer box here.

So these watches, as we've talked on "Antiques Roadshow," have become very collectible and valuable.

It's got a couple of very special features about it.

Underneath the word "Rolex" and above the word "Cosmograph," it says "Oyster," and that refers to these screw-down buttons here.

They made this version with and without screw-down buttons.

The ones without the screw-down buttons are still water-resistant, but this was a much better water-resistant case, because you could lock down the chronograph buttons on it.

It still has the foil sticker on the back with the reference number of the watch, 6263.

Had it be worn, that would be the first thing that would wear off the watch.

The date mark on the bracelet shows that it was made in the first quarter of 1971.

Your watch was made approximately 1971, and you ordered it a couple of years later.

Collectors love this watch because Paul Newman wore it in a movie called "Winning."

It wasn't this particular model, it did not have the screw-down buttons.

The one that Paul Newman wore, currently at auction, those watches are going for approximately $150,000 to $200,000.

Your watch is more special.

It says... You got to be kidding me.

It says "Oyster" on it.

Yes.

They did that for an extremely short period of time.

We refer to that as a Mark II dial.

And this particular model, being marked "oyster," is extremely, extremely rare.

A watch like this at auction is worth about $400,000.

(people laughing in background) You okay?

(people laughing) (chuckles) Don't fall.

I'm not done yet.

I said, "A watch like yours."

Because of the condition of it-- basically, it's a new old stock watch: no wear on it; the original foil sticker on the back of it; and the fact that we have all this complete documentation here, also, your watch, at auction, today, $500,000 to $700,000.

You got to be (no audio).

(laughing) No, I'm very serious.

(chuckles and murmurs) It's an absolute fabulous find.

It's one of the rarest Paul Newman models, and in this condition, I don't think there's a better one in the world.

I can't thank you enough for bringing me one of the greatest watches to ever see on "Antiques Roadshow."

And thank you very much for your service.

Unbelievable.

You can't wear it, though.

(murmurs) If you wear it, it drops down to the $400,000 value.

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

I first saw this in a homemaker's book as the oldest quilt in Pembina County.

And here it was that I was dating a guy whose grandma owned it.

So I guess it was the beginning of a love story.

Are my books worth anything?

Neigh!

I brought in a color lithograph print from a deceased Chinese artist called Zao Wou-Ki, but the real treasure is right here.

I'd agree with that appraisal.

We drove four hours just to get to Fargo so we could come to the Antiques Roadshow!

To find out our stuff is a no-go.

(laughing): Thanks, "Antiques Roadshow."

This was an engagement present from an American man I married in Iran, and it has quite a lot of value, but definitely not as much value as our Persian wedding certificate, which had room for four wives, and I was wife number one.

Brought a few different items, but nothing of value.

(in high-pitched voice): Didn't make any money, but I had a great time!

(laughing): Thanks, "Antiques Roadshow."

Bye-bye!

PEÑA: Thanks for watching.

See you next time on "Antiques Roadshow Recut."