From Barbie to the Boston Celtics: 'Antiques Roadshow' episodes from Vermont ready to air

It took more than a quarter-century, but the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow” finally visited Vermont last July.

And now, at the end of the show’s 27th season, the episodes from the Shelburne Museum are ready to air.

The first of three hour-long episodes from the Shelburne visit is set to be broadcast on PBS at 8 p.m. Monday, April 24; the others will air the following two Mondays, May 1 and May 8. The Burlington Free Press viewed the episodes in advance and offers this largely-spoiler-free synopsis of some of the items nearly 3,000 people brought and the dollar amounts – some shockingly huge, some disappointingly tiny – the appraisers estimated those objects are worth.

Episode 1: Mickey Mantle, William Shakespeare and Pokémon

The introduction to the first hour relays a brief history through words and archival photos of the Shelburne Museum, founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb as a “collection of collections.” Appraisals of items are filmed with iconic museum scenes in the background – the carousel, the Round Barn, the Colchester Reef lighthouse and the steamboat Ticonderoga – setting the tone for a host of old objects being evaluated amid a host of old objects.

A man brings in a landscape painting that would be worth more, according to appraiser Graydon Sykes, had it not been “aggressively cleaned.” Owners of a briefcase that belonged to a pre-presidential John F. Kennedy and a book of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” from 1655 learn they’re not sitting on gold mines.

A woman who brings in a ring is ecstatic to learn from appraiser Kevin Zavian that the item was manufactured by the jeweler to the Rockefellers and is worth something resembling Rockefeller money.

“No way! Wow! That’s kind of exciting!” she says. “I need to go put it in a safe-deposit box or go do something now because I’ve just been carrying it around in a backpack for a week.”

Casual viewers might associate “Antiques Roadshow” with long-ago, obscure objects, but some items brought to Shelburne are more recent. A man wearing a T-shirt with a logo from the South End Art Hop in Burlington arrives with a Mickey Mantle baseball card. He smiles when appraiser Leila Dunbar tells him the 1951 card is “probably one of the top five that is collected today.”

A woman brings in a set of Pokémon cards her mother bought for $35 online in 1999. Some individual cards in the collection, appraiser Travis Landry tells her, are worth considerably more than that on their own. He tempers the good news by noting that, because of fluctuations in the collectibles market, the cards would have been worth even more a few years ago.

Episode 2: Barbie, Secretariat and a pair of old underwear

“Antiques Roadshow” sets more of the scene by describing the Shelburne Museum’s 39 buildings and 100,000-plus items in its collection. Segments focus on the Lake Champlain steamer Ticonderoga, the horse-drawn vehicle collection in the Horseshoe Barn and the “Impressionist masterworks” by Monet, Manet, Degas and Cassatt in the Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building.

Another painter, N.C. Wyeth, wrote letters in the early 1900s to a family whose descendent brings the mailings in for appraisal. (Wyeth’s son, Andrew, painted a work that’s in the museum’s collection.) Other items appraised include a rare Tiffany-made carriage clock from 1889 and a blanket commemorating the 1973 Triple Crown season of Secretariat, the equine that appraiser Philip Weiss calls “the Babe Ruth of horse racing.”

A woman who bought a small painting of a mountain scene at auction for $2.50 is excited to learn the artwork is worth considerably more. “That was a good investment,” she says. Another woman has a similar return on her “American Girl Barbie” set that retailed for less than $5 in 1965. Appraiser Billye Harris hones in on the often-arcane details of memorabilia by telling the woman her Barbie with a platinum-blonde bob hairdo is especially sought after by collectors.

The episode wraps up with quick assessments by visitors who sometimes but often don’t hear what they want to hear. One woman seems astonished that a pair of bloomer-styled underwear is worth several hundred dollars. Another drove all the way to Shelburne from Brooklyn to experience “such a disappointment” that a painting she thought was worth a lot is not. A woman arrived with a cameo pin she expected to be valuable; it turns out it’s made of plastic and basically worthless.

Episode 3: Boston Celtics, Eleanor Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill

More items from the Shelburne Museum’s collection – artistically-designed quilts, the covered bridge, the duck-decoy display – receive the feature treatment. A man brings in an item Electra Havemeyer Webb no doubt would have coveted for her museum: the large, arrow-shaped original weathervane from the 19^th-century Stowe Community Church.

Dunbar, who assessed a Mickey Mantle card in the first episode, returns to estimate the value of a basketball and photo signed by members of the Boston Celtics in the 1950s, including Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Bill Russell. She mentions the importance of coach Red Auerbach and that his accomplishments including drafting the first Black player into the NBA, Chuck Cooper.

“This photo is the birth of the Celtics dynasty,” according to Dunbar. “Auerbach was really the architect of that.”

Nicholas D. Lowry appraises what he calls a “very rare” poster from one of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Cody was “the most famous showman in the world” in his time, according to Lowry, a showman himself in his handlebar moustache and plaid three-piece suit.

Sometimes the owners of items are stunned at what the objects are worth, and sometimes the appraisers are stunned to encounter something they’ve long sought.

“I have known about this clock for over 45 years,” appraiser Gary R. Sullivan says of a timepiece bought at auction by Henry Ford that had been on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “I just didn’t know who owned it.”

A woman brings in a high-school yearbook from when her father’s family was forced to live at a Japanese internment camp in the western U.S. during World War II. A young girl learns the value of autobiographies of Eleanor Roosevelt signed by the First Lady who lived in the White House during World War II. A man who was a huge fan of the legendary Bobby Fischer/Boris Spassky chess match held in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972 listens as appraiser Simeon Lipman discusses a postcard the man received from Fischer while in Reykjavik.

“Bobby Fischer is an exceedingly rare signature,” Lipman tells him. “He’s a really tough autograph.”

The final episode nears its end with appraiser Lucy Grogan Edwards flabbergasted by a circa-1900 sapphire and diamond ring. “When I saw that sapphire,” she says, “my eyes lit up.” Then she tells the owner what the piece of jewelry is worth.

“That’s quite something,” the woman says as tears well in her eyes.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: From Barbie to Boston Celtics: Vermont-set 'Antiques Roadshow' to air