'Antiques Roadshow' seller gasps in disbelief after expert reveals the value of her wooden crate

Items featured on “Antiques Roadshow” have their own history that plays a major role when experts figure out their true value in present times. But at the same time, some artifacts have a special place in the hearts of the guests who bring them to the show. The emotions associated with such items erupt when people react to the appraisal by experts and that’s what happened to a woman who brought items made by the legendary Tiffany Studios. These items were bought by the guest’s aunt during The Great Depression, which was a hard time for Americans, and today, the collection is worth a fortune.

The guest believed that the wooden crate in which the items had come originally, would also hold some value, and so she brought it on the show as well. Turns out that it was the best decision she could have made as Antique expert Arlie Sulka was excited when she saw the collection but first, she had to take a look at the crate. What set it apart from regular crates was that its sides were glass-plastered.

It also had the words, “Louis C Tiffany Studios,” carved onto it, along with an address. These elements made the crate highly valuable. “The crate, in a retail setting, this is something for Tiffany geeks everywhere - collectors, museums - they would actually be very excited about this and it would be worth between $5,000 and $10,000,” the expert said. “Holy cow,” the guest exclaimed, clearly proving that this was a lot more than what she had expected.

Apart from the crate, there were two items kept on the table. One of them was a pastel glass structure that was presumably manufactured during the 1920s. The expert said that it would retail between $2,000 and $3,000. But, the other item on the table was a painted glass paperweight vase, and had a story behind it.

“Leslie Nash, who worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany, claims that while they were working with paperweight vases, Louis Tiffany himself, who was a painter, came into the glass-working shop, handed them a painting of morning glories that he had painted, and said, 'I want you to make them in glass.' Supposedly, it took $12,000 in R&D to create this kind of glassware,” Sulka explained.

She then said that such a paperweight vase would not be hard to find in museums around the globe. The guest then remembered seeing one at the Met in New York. Sulka then said that the one at the Met had the serial number 1130-L written at the bottom while this one was 1132-L. “In a retail shop, it could be sold for anywhere between $50,000 and $75,000,” the expert added.

The guest could not believe what she was hearing as she estimated the value of the full collection to be within $10,000. But the best was yet to come. Sulka carefully picked out a third piece from inside the crate. “This practically stopped my heart when I saw it in the box,” she said. The expert said that she had been waiting for such a piece to show up on “Antiques Roadshow” for 20 years. It was a Tiffany lava vase, named because of the pattern of the object that symbolizes molten lava.

This kind of vase was tough to make back in the day as it would often crack in the process due to its unusual shape. There were protrusions on its surface as well which made it all the more interesting. Surla revealed that such an item was shown at the 1906 Paris Salon Exhibition and that another one has been inside a museum in the French capital since that time. “An example like this, in a retail shop, could sell between $100,000 and $150,000,” the expert added. The guest bent over laughing in disbelief as she heard it, holding her chest. “Where’s my brother?” she asked as she looked around. “That’s unbelievable. I had no idea.”