♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: The excitement is growing as "Roadshow" sets up at the Idaho Botanical Garden in Boise.

Wow.

That's pretty amazing.

That's cool.

It's priceless to me.

PEÑA: It's "Antiques Roadshow Recut."

♪ ♪ PEÑA: "Roadshow" has touched down in Boise at the Idaho Botanical Garden.

Even on a cool, cloudy day, it's easy to see why this lovely natural space has been called a sanctuary in the heart of the old penitentiary historic district.

The 33-acre garden, which was launched in 1984, is built on some of the former grounds of the Old Idaho Penitentiary, now a museum.

What treasures with Idaho history have come in to "Roadshow" today?

Let's take a look.

(laughing) They were gems and, um, gold that were given to my grandmother.

They've been in the family since the early 1900s.

You brought them in, like, a little crumpled-up plastic bag.

Yeah.

(chuckles) Took me half an hour to get the note out.

(laughs) Tell us what the note says.

The note says the hi, Idaho gems were given to Louise Morrison when her father, John Tracy Morrison, was governor of Idaho.

The red one is, in fact, garnet, which is one of the gemstones... Of Idaho.

...of Idaho.

Uh-huh.

The other one really fooled me, because it's got this light bluish green.

Uh-huh.

And I'm thinking, okay, maybe it's aqua.

I tested it, and, son of a gun, it's sapphire.

I'll be darned.

(laughs) Now, Montana's famous for sapphire.

Uh-huh.

Idaho, I didn't know.

Potatoes, yeah.

The Gem State.

The Gem State.

Yeah.

And then what I love is the gold nuggets.

They're also from here.

It's a pair of earrings and a little pin/pendant.

They weigh about three pennyweights-- there's not a ton a ton of gold here.

Right.

But the fact that all of this comes from this state...

Isn't that great?

I think it's so cool.

Yeah.

So value-wise, you have about $300 of gold in the gold nuggets.

But the fact that you got that provenance, could be $300 to $500.

And then you have a ring, which, I just love the story, and it's lovely, but the ring's probably worth $150.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Well, as they say, it's priceless to us, yeah.

Well, it's a family piece.

My family's from the East Coast, New England area.

I, I don't know quite back that far.

There was a captain of a clipper ship that ran out of Yarmouth, on the Cape.

Okay.

The other side of my dad's family was from Pennsylvania area.

My uncles, my aunt, and my dad all kind of moved out west in the '70s.

And my grandmother and grandfather followed the kids to Colorado and Idaho.

Um, and then as my grandmother was aging, and we were just moving her into a smaller home, this one ended up with me.

And I stuffed it in a U-Haul and brought it back up to Idaho.

And that was from Denver?

Yeah, Colorado Springs area.

Yeah.

Okay, so, do you think this is one of the original pieces from the East Coast, or...?

(slowly): Yeah.

My aunt thought it might have come from the side of the family in Pennsylvania.

This chest is from the Federal period, and it's likely 1795 to 1805.

It's actually from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Okay.

Not Pennsylvania.

Okay.

So it's probably from your New England side of the family.

Okay, okay.

And I know that without even having to pull the drawers or anything.

What's iconic about this and indicative of the Portsmouth area is the way the drawers are divided into thirds.

And the real giveaway is that panel in the middle of each drawer that drops down to the middle... Uh-huh.

...and then that pendant apron below.

Uh-huh.

The drawers are made out of mahogany veneer, but they have what's called flame birch panels in the middle.

The secondary woods are white pine.

The case sides and the case top, again, made out of birch.

Birch grows in abundance, white pine grows in abundance in New Hampshire.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mahogany was imported from the Caribbean often.

Mm-hmm.

And they used it in very limited amounts, and here it's just veneer and accents.

I see.

The inlay that mat, that goes a, around the edge of the top is also repeated around the bottom of the case.

Yeah.

And the other piece of the detail that I like a great deal is that drop pendant that I mentioned, and how it's flanked by checkered inlay... Uh-huh.

...or staggered inlay.

I almost, if I step back and look at it, it feels to me almost like a column.

The brasses have been replaced.

Okay.

So you were mentioning some of the condition issues.

Easy to fix.

These things are built to last.

In this condition and with this nice old surface, which is not original, but it's old and dry and great color... Yeah.

...I think I could put an auction estimate on this piece without any difficulty of $15,000 to $20,000.

Wow.

That's pretty amazing.

That's cool.

I'm just glad it's survived as many moves across the country and around the West, and I hope my daughters are gonna be interested in it enough to kind of keep, keep it in good shape and hopefully pass it on down through the generations.

Back in my 20s, I may have had "Antiques Roadshow," uh, drinking games... (laughs) ...uh, with some of my friends.

I might send, uh, a few pictures of this to some old buddies, and see if they... (chuckling) ...make the over under, or if they owe me a beer.

(laughs) So...

GUEST: It passed down to my husband's father, and now my husband.

And he just had it in a box stashed away, 'cause it was so special.

In terms of collectability, especially for Americana clothing, it really doesn't get better than Levi's.

Here in the U.S. and overseas, especially in Japan, they go crazy for this stuff.

I would date this to, uh, maybe circa 1910.

I think it was perhaps a handout at one of the World's Fairs.

It also folds out into a pair of jeans/coveralls.

If I were to have this insured, I'd perhaps go $1,300 to $1,500.

I'm glad you treasured it, 'cause it's definitely a treasure.

Yeah.

Oh, we just love it.

This is my great-grandparents' clock that they bought right after they got married in 1901.

We had it restored, and it sits in my office, and it gives the wonderful soothing clicking sound that you can hear throughout the whole house, sometimes a little loud.

I brought this pin that my Uncle Shiro made in the internment camp at Poston.

That's my uncle right there, Shiro.

My mom received this pin from Shiro, who is her brother-in-law, and she gave it to me.

And then I had it framed with the story and the picture of, of the camp.

The other thing I have is this picture of him receiving his internment orders from this soldier.

Did you know your uncle?

No, he passed in, um, 1956.

Tell us what's happening in this photo.

He was living on Terminal Island.

That was located in California.

The soldier right there is giving the order to my uncle that they have to evacuate the island and go to the internment camp.

I wonder what he's thinking as he's, as he's reading this.

So when he was asked to leave, it wasn't to relocate 20 miles down the road.

No.

They took him all the way to Yuma.

Yes.

I've researched the National Archives, and they said that he was in the relocation camp from 1942 to 1946.

I'm a Sansei, which is three generations.

And I wasn't born during this period.

And I read this book.

Um... (voice trembling): And it was very hard to read, um... (clears throat) A lot of the Japanese... (exhales) ...received 48 hours or so to get their belongings and leave.

And some of the men left, and the women stayed with the children.

My paternal grandparents and my maternal grandparents were too far inland, so they were not interred.

(sniffles) Were they treated with respect by their fellow Americans?

No.

My mother and my grandmother and grandfather had a farm in a small town in Utah.

And... She heard all this noise.

(sniffs) And she walked out.

(voice trembling): And, um, there were some men in white sheets, and they were trying to push my grandfather's tractor into the lake.

And my grandmother tried to stop them, and they pushed her down.

I d...

It's really hard for me to understand that hatred.

Or fear, or, or whatever emotions it was.

Their house was egged.

One of the teachers taught the kids to say, "Go home..."-- I can't even say the word-- um, in Spanish.

And she was the only Japanese in the class.

My mom said that if she were in a relocation camp, they probably would have been safer.

From tragedy, sometimes, comes art.

And that's what we have here.

What do you know about this?

We believe that my uncle created it out of sagebrush, and they had paints.

It's amazing.

Internment camp artwork is not exclusive to the experience of the Japanese Americans in the Second World War.

This is something that militaria collectors, trench art collectors, see going back through time.

Really, where you see the most of it is in the First World War.

The level of detail is beautiful.

And it is interesting that it's a way to cope... Mm-hmm.

...with being in an intolerable circumstance.

Mm-hmm.

Make something beautiful out of something that is not beautiful at all: the way that we disrespect one another.

These are American citizens.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what made this so particularly heinous within the way that we look at history.

The artifact clearly has emotional significance to you.

Yes.

It has cultural significance to the Japanese American community.

Yes.

And because of that, when these do come up for sale, there is often offense taken.

I like to tell folks that there are three major components of the system that saves history.

There's the family, who decided that something was worth saving.

And then there are museums that can curate a tiny percent of what needs to be saved.

And then there's the collecting community that steps in to do the rest.

Mm-hmm.

So we all work together to make sure that history is saved.

Artifacts are conduits to the past.

It's a touchstone.

Every time you look at this, you're feeling what happened... Mm-hmm.

...to your family.

And I think everybody else who looks at these things, when they see them, because they know the story, they can share in that and empathize with you.

There's the building blocks of making sure that we respect one another as human beings, and we don't let things like that happen again.

If one of these was to come up for sale, I would expect to see a retail value of $1,000 to $1,500.

It's priceless to me.

It's interesting how things haven't really changed that much.

I'm Japanese American.

But I'm a person.

My mom is 95, and she still has a deep, sad feeling.

PEÑA: This is the steam plant, built in 1907 by the inmates to help power the expanding penitentiary complex.

The plant heated the prison until 1973, when the Idaho State Penitentiary closed for good.

This skull, carved sometime prior to the prison's closing, is a reminder of a difficult time spent behind stone walls and metal bars.

♪ ♪ GUEST: It was given to my father from his grandfather.

I'm next in line to, to inherit it, and we don't mu, know much about it.

Um, it was appraised in 1991, and they estimated that it was from about 1820 and it's French.

I love the little illustration on the front.

And also, it plays music, and that's one of the best parts.

The case is made out of 18-karat gold.

I would date it about 1830.

Okay.

It's a key wound watch, key set.

You've got the keys right here for the watch.

Mm-hmm.

Musical watches are quite rare.

You told me you didn't even know it was musical, and you were just playing with it, maybe yesterday... (laughs) ...and you heard music go off on it?

Mm-hmm.

The watch was made in France.

What's really wonderful is this face on it, or the dial of the watch.

And we have an early American flag on there, so... Mm-hmm.

The subject matter is phenomenal.

That's porcelain enamel.

That's all hand-painted.

And then you have this gold that's on top of the dial there.

You notice at the center, how it's indented a little bit right there?

Uh-huh.

That is called a bull's eye crystal.

Can't get those today.

And if we turn it over...

This back, the French called it guilloché, or, we call it engine-turning.

I'm gonna just open it up here.

First, we look at the inner cover of the watch.

In French, that's called a cuvette, and it was a dust cover to protect the movement of the watch.

You have two different mechanisms in the watch.

The smaller barrel, that's what holds the mainspring inside.

Mm-hmm.

That's the one that you would wind to run the watch.

And there's a larger barrel here, and that is the spring that powers the musical part of the watch.

This watch played music in two different ways.

It would play music on the hour if you wanted it to.

And then there was a button that plays it on demand, and that was the button that you hit by accident... (laughs) ...and it started playing music.

That must have been a surprise, right?

It was, it was.

I mean, did you think you broke it at first?

(laughs): Yes.

Or, or, like, you know, "Wait a minute, what's all that noise coming out of it?"

We're going to play this right now.

(music playing from watch) What do you think the value of it was?

When it was appraised in 1991, they estimated about $2,500.

A musical watch in gold today, a nice example of one, would, would probably bring somewhere between $5,000 and $8,000.

But we have this spectacular face on this watch.

A watch collector would love it.

A person that loves musical, music boxes, anything musical.

And then Americana, 'cause of the American flag on it.

An auction value today, I would put on it, with all these features on it, I think this watch would easily bring between $15,000 and $20,000.

Wow, that is quite the shock.

It's been in the safety deposit for, like, 20 years.

So, wow.

That's great.

(laughs) Thank you.

The dial, that's the first one I've ever seen like that.

Really?

On, on a musical watch like this.

So, it's quite nice.

GUEST (chuckles): We found this in an old woodshed in Minnesota when we were tearing the woodshed down.

It was underneath all the wood.

Okay.

And had probably been there since the 1880s or so.

Yeah, it had probably been there since it was almost new.

Right.

It's an 1876 American color lithograph.

It's in German.

They would have the exact same print in English.

Hmm.

I've even come across them sometimes in Polish.

The whole market for Victorian sentimental religious prints is, is not... (laughing): It's not hot.

(laughs) As a retail price, I'd say maybe $75, $100, something like that.

Oh, boy, I... (stammers) I'll quit bragging about it now to my family.

(laughing) Well, the value's not the only thing with this stuff.

Enjoy it.

Okay, thank you.

GUEST: I believe it belonged to my great-grandmother's sister.

I don't know anything about her.

I don't know if they made her themselves or if they purchased her.

Actually, the doll was made in Germany by a company called Hertwig.

Mmm.

And she's made of china, and she was made in the 1880s or 1890s.

Okay.

And what I really love about her is, she has blonde hair instead of black.

The retail value on her would be around $100 to $150.

Okay.

They're fairly easily found, but this one's just in awesome condition.

GUEST: Well, I am directly, uh, descended from these two.

They were my great-great-great- grandparents.

They were painted in 1826.

I got them about 20 years ago from a lady who found out I was also their direct descendants.

Right.

So she gave them to us.

As a gift, yeah.

That's, that's very cool.

Yeah, it really is.

And the name is Meb, Mebane.

Meb, Mebane.

Mebane.

There's a town in North Carolina by that name, and, same family.

I am fascinated by family history.

Right.

And this helps a lot, so... And, and you've traced them back to their original ownership, right?

Right.

In the town that your ancestors founded, which is in North Carolina.

Yeah.

When these came up to the folk art table, my eyes got really big, and I... (chuckles) My heart started pounding, and, because I love great folk art.

They have this, this appeal to them, this, the great colors.

Look at the faces staring straight at you.

They're very direct.

It's literally a record of their lives in 1826, David and Elizabeth Mebane.

Right.

There are a group of portraits done in Guilford County, North Carolina.

And this artist is called the, the Guilford County Limner.

And a limner is an artist who moved around while he worked, he was, most were itinerant artists.

And they traveled to different counties.

So we, no one knows the name of the artist.

The artist has not been identified yet.

And some of the characteristics are the very large eyes with, literally, eyelashes.

And I'll say your great-great-great-grandfather looks like, rather like Paul McCartney.

(chuckles) Even, even with the British haircut, right?

(laughs): Yeah, he does.

The flowers in the background of both the male and female portraits.

Also, the architectural details that are very bright in the background.

Hmm.

Those are all characteristics of the Guilford Limner.

These are fabulous watercolors on paper.

The Guilford Limner was known for these bright colors, this brilliant lime green, this really great red.

Those colors are just like they were painted yesterday.

Considering what a fragile medium it is, these works have survived extremely well.

They're the essence of folk art.

This limner only worked in Guilford County during the years of about 1826 to 1827.

I feel that a conservative estimate on this pair at auction would be $20,000 to $30,000.

(gasps, chuckles) Whoa!

(chuckles) On a good day, they could get up near $40,000.

Whoa.

So... (chuckles) I hope my family is listening.

(both laughing) Well...

I'll tell them.

(chuckles) I'm, I'm pretty sure you're gonna keep 'em, though.

You're gonna try to keep 'em.

Oh, absolutely, I treasure them.

You should insure them for $40,000.

Wow.

At least.

(chuckling): I'll be sure to do that.

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

We got this from a friend of ours.

It is a late '60s, early '70s television set.

Um, we learned that, since it's working, it's probably worth... (laughs): ...about $300 to $400, which is kind of a fun surprise.

We bought this decanter and four cups for $40.

We thought they were Czech.

They're actually Venetian and four times what they're worth, and our friends said they were ugly.

But the joke's on them.

So thank you, "Antiques Roadshow."

I brought in this doll that we got at a storage unit auction.

Her dress and her hat are made of honeycomb, and we just had never seen anything like that.

And the appraisers said the same thing.

They've never seen anything like that.

(laughs) So they said she's worth about $150 to $200.

These fun napkin rings came from a thrift store in town.

They were four dollars and are worth about $300, made out of silver.

We brought what we thought was a watercolor painting that turned out to be a print, that turned out to actually be, uh, a colored photograph that was handed down from her grandmother, my great-grandmother.

Uh, and on the back, there's a lovely little note that says it was appraised by an antique dealer, uh, for around $200.

We found that it was worth a shocking $30.

(laughs) This is Julius Caesar.

(laughs) Um, a bust of Julius Caesar, not the real one.

Um, we got him at the thrift store for $7.99.

We came to "Antiques Roadshow," found out he's $200.

Um... (laughs) So we will keep him on the coffee table in the living room.

But he will be far more valuable.

And he will wear seasonal hats.

PEÑA: Thanks for watching.

See you next time on "Antiques Roadshow Recut."