'Antiques Roadshow' guest says she got a 'nice return' on her money after her sculpture gets appraised
Guests on "Antiques Roadshow" don't just turn up with family heirlooms and art lying around the house for a long time, but they also hope to make the most of their investment in items, which they have bought from random places. One such guest got a pleasant surprise when her $15 sculpture was appraised at a large amount. The owner of the Marcello Fantoni sculpture told the show's expert, Stuart Slavid, that she bought the item decades ago. While she knew a little about the artist, she wasn't expecting Slavid to deliver a $3,000 appraisal, which translated to a 200% return on investment for her.
The guest told the expert, "I bought it in '61 from Macy's in New York City. It was something I saw that I liked." When the appraiser asked if she knew anything about the artist, the guest shared that she looked him up on the internet and was surprised to see how famous he was.
Slavid then took over to explain the significance of the item and the artist. He noted that the item had a strong Picasso influence as Fantoni followed him closely. "He got a lot of his stylized designs from Picasso's works," Slavid said. "Very unique in his glazes. The stylized designs. He took a lot of classical designs, and by using different glazes and unique ways of putting the pottery together, you have a very modernistic-looking piece. He didn't do a lot, up until this period, in figures, so what we're looking at is actually a quite unique design and the most desirable of what he made," Slavid added.
He mentioned that the artist did a lot of little dishes, bowls, and commercial pieces, and a sculpture was pretty unique. "It was manufactured to be sold through retail outlets, and the largest group of them was sold in retail outlets in the United States by all of the major department stores," he told the guest. Coming to its condition, the expert noted it was perfectly preserved, and it spoke of the artist. "You don't need to see his signature to know that, and his workshop was quite famous for this type of enamel design," Slavid added. However, the piece did carry the artist's unique signature as well.
Before the appraisal, Slavid asked the guest how much she paid for the item, and she said "$15," while she was chuckling. When asked to guess the sculpture's current value, the owner responded, "On the computer, I had seen that something similar was offered, I think, for $1,500 or $1,600, I'm not really sure." But Slavid went on to blow her mind when he said that a major collector could pay more than $3,000 for the item. The guest was pleasantly surprised as she said, "Oh, my, oh, my. That's a nice return on my money, isn't it?"
In the end, the expert told the guest that if she knew better, in hindsight, she would have bought more of the sculptures from the Macy's store. "Yeah, I wish I had," the guest said in the end.
More on Market Realist:
'Antiques Roadshow' guest reveals the appraisal for his heirloom was 10 times more than he expected
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