This is going to be a pretty great update. I mean assuming you love Antiques Roadshow as much is I do which is probably unlikely unless you are a 65 year old woman from middle America. I am pretty much obsessed with Antiques Roadshow in a completely non ironic way. It’s sort of the perfect TV show combining great stories, educational information and a wide variety of subjects all with an emotional payoff at the end of each segment when they find out what their items are worth. As someone full of cynicism and hate I love watching people incredibly passionate and in love with stuff I never even considered interesting before. It’s led me to find beauty in things like stone pottery and Federalist furniture. I have watched probably hundreds of episodes.
The Antiques Roadshow finally came to NYC last Saturday for the first time in many years. I tried to win their free ticket lottery but had no luck. I tried to buy a ticket online but they were over $100. I decided to reach out to a friend I met at jury duty who works PBS and amazingly he got me a pair of tickets. My friend Pinky Guest is pretty obsessed with thrift stores and flea markets so I decided to bring her along. I was pumped.
What I failed to mention is that at the same time I was frantically trying to find a ticket I was also pitching the story to my editor at the Village Voice. He liked the idea but was out of town and didn’t try to request a press pass until two days before the show. I already had tickets at that point and I had given up hope of covering it as a journalist, but on Friday afternoon the confirmation came through and I was approved!
I didn’t know what to do about Pinky though, I felt bad just abandoning her there so I had an idea. She writes copy for advertising and has worked professionally as a blogger in the past and she also runs Ebay Shop Of Horrors so I pitched both her and my editor on the idea of her writing a story to go with my pictures. They were both on board and we set out on the greatest three hour adventure of our lives!
When we got to the Roadshow we were introduced to our media escort who would take us around the event since there are a lot of rules in place to protect the privacy of people who have won big money items on the show. For example we could only publish first names of the attendees we interviewed. Our escort also let us cut the line to have our items appraised!
We each were able to bring two items to be appraised by a Roadshow expert. Pinky brought two pieces of her mom’s old jewelry and I brought a terrifying unicorn taxidermy (that Pinky found while searching for Ebay Shop Of Horrors items) and a belt buckle that I bought at a flea market for $5.
Our first stop was to the jewelry appraisers who told Pinky that her first item was worth a couple hundred dollars but could be worth more if she could find a photo of her mom wearing it at Studio 54, a frequent haunt of her mothers back in the day. Pinky was a bit disappointed with that but was excited to learn that the biggest stone in her second item, a bracelet, was a yellow sapphire and not citrine as she believed. It ended up being worth as much as $2000!
I took both my items to a bestashed gentleman at the “Collectables” table. He seemed very excited about both my items and told me that my unicorn was probably made as a souvenir in the 60s in China and might actually be made of dog hair! He told me it was worth $250 which annoyed the hell out of Pinky since she told me about it and I won the ebay auction for $35. “How could your unicorn be worth more than my necklace!?” My belt buckle seemed to be the real prize though and my appraiser seemed to be in love with it. It’s a folk art buckle with an Easy Rider style chopper on the front with an engraving from a father to his son on the back. I found out it was actually made of silver and he showed it to another appraiser before telling me it was worth $75. I was sort of surprised at how low the appraisal was given his level of excitement but considering I paid $5 for it I still left a big winner.
After our appraisals we wondered around the convention center talking to people about their items. Pinky interviewed about 25 people while I took pictures. We met a guy who paid $50 for a rifle stock that he found out was worth $10,000 and a couple who live in artist Red Grooms’ former loft and their collection of his art was worth $15,000. We also got to interview the dreamy Roadshow host Mark L. Walberg and talk to one of my favorite appraisers about antique fire arms! It was pretty fantastic. After that Pinky and I watched the 100 Foot Journey proving that we are little old ladies trapped in 30 year old hipster bodies.
Pinky wrote a fantastic article about our trip for the Village Voice that I am pretty proud of… you should click here to read it right now.
After you look at that, take a look at a rough draft of Driven By Boredom’s new photo gallery system. There is a new Driven By Boredom update coming sooner or later but we had to rush things a bit because I broke my old galleries accidentally. They will still exist as they are now, but moving forward we are going to be using WordPress’ internal gallery system. There will be a new design to it, but for now it’s a little clunky. It’s better than the old galleries, but it will get a lot better soonish.
Now click here to see all my photos from the Antiques Roadshow at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC!
