'Antiques Roadshow' guest brings a pickle from 1845 — and it was kind of a big 'dill'
When people think of “Antiques Roadshow,” they think of jewelry, watches, paintings, and other things that can sell for a lot of money in today’s market. No one ever thinks of pickles as something that can fetch a good amount of money. Yet that is exactly what a guest brought on an earlier episode of the show and had it appraised. The item was so fascinating that two experts showed up to look at it.
The guest said that the pickle was 180 years old and that he had inherited it from his ancestors. It was grown inside the bottle in Burke County, Pennsylvania, in 1845. One of the things that fascinated the experts was how the pickle was placed inside the narrow-mouthed bottle in the first place. The presumed process of how the pickle was made was then shared by the guest, who perhaps might not have even expected to be on the show with this kind of an item.
“My ancestor either put the small cucumber in there or maybe even the blossom of the cucumber inside and grew the pickle inside the bottle, and then put the pickling brine in there. The pickle is inherited by the youngest sibling. So my father gave it to me, and I’ll give it to our daughter,” he explained. The two experts looking at this were named James Supp and Giles Moon.
“It definitely is unique,” Moon said. “James and I were thinking this is probably the first pickle we have ever appraised.” However, it was not just the pickle that caught the attention of the experts. It was the bottle as well. It had the words “George Smith and Company, Druggist, Philadelphia” engraved on the glass. The experts then revealed that it was an early American bottle that was presumably made in the mid-1800s.
“So we’re pretty confident that the bottle is authentic. It’s from the right period, around 1845, which fits family lore. The tough question is value. It’s a great bottle. If it did not have the pickle inside, it would probably be [a] $150 to $200 bottle,” Supp explained. That does not mean that the pickle reduces the value of the bottle. If anything, it enhances the value, but quite a bit.
The fact that this pickle might be one of the oldest ever made in the world today, collectors would not mind throwing some big bucks in hopes of acquiring it, as per Moon. “If we were to be able to prove that it was possibly the oldest or one of the oldest, that really takes it up a couple of notches in terms of a collector wanting it, so that could elevate it to about $500 to $700 at auction,” he added.
“Very nice,” the guest said before revealing that he had no intention of selling it. Like he had said earlier, the pickle has always been given to the youngest sibling, and that is exactly what he intends to do with it. The rest will be up to his daughter.
