'Antiques Roadshow' guest asks 'how much did you say again?' after his baseball calendar gets appraised
"Antiques Roadshow" guests bring artifacts and collectibles to the show when they expect to get a hefty value for them, but even then, a high appraisal leaves them shocked. One guest simply could not believe that a baseball calendar, which he bought online, had a five-figure valuation. The owner of the '1917 Red Sox Baseball Calendar' shared that he always doubted the authenticity of the item until he heard the show's expert, Simeon Lipman, talk about it. In the end, he was left shocked and delighted as his calendar turned out to be worth $30,000.
The guest had kept the item safe and held on to it for a decade. "It's a 1917 baseball calendar. I found it online. It was at least ten years ago. Maybe, maybe longer than that. And they said it was real. I didn't think it was really real," he told Lipman. He further added that the calendar was found "on the back of a door in a barn," and he bought it as he was from Massachusetts, and a Red Sox fan. "And if you know anything about the Red Sox, they won in 1915 and 1916, as indicated on the calendar, and I thought it was a really cool old, old piece," the guest added.
Lipman confirmed that it was a real calendar and it was a promotional piece for Bunker Hill Breweries. He further noted that the calendar included many great players of the era who won the team championships. "Right here in the middle is Harry Hooper. Hall of Famer, actually. But this team, 1917, had a great left-handed pitcher, and his name was Babe Ruth," Lipman mentioned. "1917 was a great year for him. He won 24 games as a pitcher. But he also hit .325, which was, I think, fourth-best in the American League that year," Lipman explained.
Lipman asked the guest how much he paid for the calendar. The guest shared that he paid about $200 to $250, and with the frame, the piece cost him about $500. "Well, baseball calendars are something that you'd see back then, but I've never seen this one before, and neither have my colleagues," Lipman said before sharing the appraisal.
"Because it's an early Ruth piece, because nobody's ever seen it before, it's also really big, I spoke to several of my colleagues. We all agree, at auction, we'd estimate this at $20,000 to $30,000," he told the guest.
The guest was shocked and beyond delighted, and couldn't comprehend what he had just heard. "$20,000 to 30? Wait, how much did you say again?" he asked Lipman. When the expert confirmed that he said $20,000 to $30,000, the guest turned to someone off camera and said, "Did you hear that? $20,000 to $30,000!"
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