“You can’t find those things anymore.”
“People know what they’ve got now, and they’ve got it all locked away.”
So goes the increasingly common “wisdom“ about the collectibles landscape. It’s supposed to be harder and harder to find treasure troves “in the wild,” which means everything from attics to barns, and from American flea markets to British boot sales (the latter meaning car trunks).
But Chesapeake Collectibles appraisers witnessed the waves of antiques, memorabilia, and unexpected rarities that recently poured into the show’s annual filming weekend in early October and pronounced a different verdict: It just ain’t so!
“Great stuff continues to come out,” said Ross J. Kelbaugh, whose expertise includes photographs, ephemera, and sports memorabilia.
When season 12 of Chesapeake Collectibles premieres next year, you’ll see Kelbaugh spotlighting a wide variety of items for everything from their sheer curiosity factor to their investment-grade values. But until then, we’re locking away the details as television jewels in our production vault.
Meanwhile, we kept asking: Why doesn’t the collectibles well ever run dry? “Fresh eyes” is part of it, said Allan Stypeck, the books and manuscripts guru.
During filming, Stypeck identified a significant discovery that had been out in the open in a family home but long unrecognized for even evaluation.
“Somebody’s been going into the same room ten times, and then somebody puts a different set of eyes on it and realizes what’s in that room,” explained Stypeck.
Is there an instructional aspect to this? Indeed. There are serious collectors who fail to keep anyone else, even including their immediate family, well informed about what they’ve accumulated and its potential worth. Heed the lesson.
Generalist appraiser Genice Lee has become keenly aware of this through her work with estates after collectors have become ill or passed away. She pointed out that confused inheritors also “sometimes skip over documents and archives,” yet those piles of papers can contain material from “movers and shakers at local and area levels” with historical importance.
Appraiser Robert Harrison sees a fascinating assortment of objects in his categories of furniture and decorative arts. And in three short sentences, he summed up the intrigue of all the surprises he and his fellow experts encounter –
“What am I seeing? Oh, I kind of get it now. OK, now it’s getting more interesting.”
Series producers are reviewing all of the items filmed in October to ultimately select and edit segments, and then package them into 13 exciting, new episodes for season 12.
In the meantime, Chesapeake Collectibles fans can catch replays of past episodes on Mondays at 7:30 pm on MPT-HD, or watch anytime on the free PBS App, and online at video.mpt.tv/show/chesapeake-collectibles/.