Assaying the Cauldron

Imagine people bringing items to a garage sale where other, more nicely dressed people sit at tables and render opinions on the items' values before television cameras. Of course, you have the Antiques Road Show.

The AR Show came to Tucson last Saturday. Weeks before, Shari had gotten an email from PBS and she applied for tickets. We were surprised to get them. Shari felt quite fortunate and privileged. She planned to take her copper cooking cauldron from Wellington's Peninsular Campaign, some Georgian period earrings, a solid gold cigarette lighter, and some old Korean and Chinese pottery. I didn't want to take the cauldron. It is big and bulky and weighs seventeen pounds, but it's historical and Shari wanted to learn more about it.

The Show was at the Tucson Convention Center and our appointment was at two o'clock in the afternoon. We got two tickets and instructions that each of us could bring two items. It also came with the suggestion to bring some portable seats. Wise. They knew what was involved.

The Cauldron

The Convention Center is a big facility. We didn't realize just how big, nor did we realize how many people had received tickets for the AR Show. The $10 parking lots were jammed, cars cruised the streets looking for space, and all sorts of people were streaming back and forth from the Center carrying odd packages. The downtown area was so congested, Shari decided to give up and return home.

I had not really wanted to go in the first place, and I don't like crowds, but I also like the challenge of finding a free parking place on the street. I knew that Shari had really been looking forward to the Show. Fortunately, we had taken our nimble Agamemnon (our bronze-colored Honda Fit) and we found a place to park only four blocks away.

I don't like being conspicuous, but I certainly was carrying the cauldron. Shari carried a bag and two folding camp stools she purchased from Big-5 the day before. We approached a couple of older people on the street carrying packages and walking away from the Center. Shari asked them about the crowd. They said it was really bad. There had been an electrical fire at the Center earlier that morning, so everything was running late.

We trudged on in the heat of the day, me carrying the cauldron across the street, down a sidewalk, through one entrance, out another, down some steps, and into the grand entrance, a really large area crowded with people and packages loosely organized into serpentine lines according to their appointment time. We almost turned around and left. Somehow, we just kept going.

The scene reminded me of photographs of Polish refugees carrying a few possessions as they fled the German invasion, or a horrendous line at an airport TSA security check. But the odd packages that people were carrying, pulling, and carting looked more chaotic-refugee than carry-on luggage. People carried large paintings, some brown paper wrapped, others just plucked off the walls. Garden carts, kids' Flyer vehicles, grocery store carts, and furniture dollies were used to drag heavier items. There were shopping bags, rifle bags, gun boxes, and rolled up carpets. I carried the cauldron, which drew quite a few comments.

The people were even more interesting. They were heavily weighted towards the elderly, some in wheelchairs, others carrying oxygen bottles. Those carrying the gun bags tended to be younger. Despite the crowds and the long wait, the entire scene was quite subdued. The AR Show folks had the system down. Scores and scores of docents wearing "AR" T-shirts herded and guided the crowd into organized lines.

The lines inched slowly — too slow to really move, too fast to really sit on our collapsable stools. There was a serpentine line in the grand entrance hall that switch-backed into another, even larger hall where we got a chance to sit and wait. Then we snaked out that hall, down some escalators, and into the really big hall that was laid out with crowd-control streamers (like those crime scene tapes that police use) that segregated the area and the people into about twenty or thirty alternating switchback queues.

One advantage of spending some five hours in crowded lines is the chance to meet people you otherwise wouldn't. It's a variation of the stagecoach phenomenon.

In the entrance hall, the first fellow we talked with was in his fifties and had been in the Air Force stationed in Turkey. At first, comparing notes about travel in Eastern Turkey and Spain was interesting. He proceeded to describe flying munitions and bales of US currency into Iraq, searching for artifacts in the Sonoran Desert, then hangings and Mexican military on the border, working with juvenile offenders, and pretty much anything else to keep going. He wasn't a Democrat or a Republican, he assured us. He was a tea-party guy who had plenty of first-hand experience not to trust the government. He just kept going, even as our portion of the line headed west and his went east. It became awkward.

The person in front of us was a young woman dressed in Gothic black lace with colorful tattoos on her arms, shoulders and neck. She wasn't the type of person with whom I'd ordinarily strike up a conversation, but Shari did. Lisa was delightful, intelligent, and generous in spirit. She was from Wisconsin, presently lived in Portland, Oregon, was staying in Phoenix, and had just arrived the day before from a month trip to Scotland including the island of Iona. She told us about spending six months in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, helping set up a "hippie camp" that brought fresh, organic food donated from Wisconsin and served hundreds of free meals every day. She told us about what the press didn't cover: the families and police who have run the parishes with greed and graft for decades if not centuries.

As if Lisa's and the Air Force fellow's experiences of government were not enough, our third conversation of any length was with a woman who talked about gun-toting survivalists in California. But I'm getting ahead of myself because that took place just before we entered the sanctum sanctorum.

A partition divided the main hall of the Convention Center into two. The first half was set up for the main serpentine line that kept moving slowly and giving little opportunity to sit and rest. A really large screen TV showed scenes from the Antiques Road Show, a "Big Brother" type distraction to help placate and animate the crowd at the same time.

After some four hours of lines, yours truly lugging the cauldron, shifting its weight from one arm to the other, our tickets were punched and we were allowed to enter the other side where a bank of tables were set up. This was the preliminary screening.

People unpacked and revealed their treasures and the nicely dressed screeners handed out tickets identifying whether the item was to be appraised was categorized as Militaria, Jewelry, Collectables (the longest line, we were told), Fabrics, Paintings, Furniture, Photographs, Books, Dolls —you get the idea. The young man was curious about the cauldron. Among all the thousands and thousands of stuff people dragged in, it was unusual. We chose Militaria for the cauldron, but took a Metalwork ticket just in case. Shari got two Asian Arts tickets and one Jewelry.

Inside that other half of the Convention Center was a circular arrangement of portable walls some twenty feet tall, like wagons drawn in a circle or a corral, with multiple entry points labeled with the various item categories. Bright lines taped on the floor marked where people waited to enter for the corresponding category of appraisers. Huge lights peered over the walls facing inside the circular corral. The AR T-shirted docents were even more numerous here.

We opted for the Militaria category line first. That was a mistake which earned us the one-way conversation about survivalists in California. I should have known better. I don't like guns or the gun mentality and it was a cooking pot that we wanted assayed, not something that serves to kill. I began to notice that there were more smiles on the people waiting to go in than on the people coming out.

We finally got inside the corral, the sanctum sanctorum. We had reached nirvana, the portable stage-set for the Antiques Road Show. Appraisers sat behind tables all around in front of signs advertising the item category. In the middle of this large area was the main stage where a lucky few waited (in chairs!) to be interviewed on camera. There were lights, cameras, and technicians everywhere, and the entire area was flooded with an unnatural, evenly bright white light.

The Militaria tables were being presented with revolvers, rifles, bayonets, swords and even something that looked like an old fireman's helmet. I felt awkward hanging onto the cauldron. Our Air Force buddy, who had been in the two o'clock line ahead of us, was in a trance by the side of the Militaria table. He was eavesdropping on everything, unable to take himself away. When we got to the front of the line, we overheard him ask one chap how much his revolver had been appraised for. "A hundred bucks." Our Air Force buddy replied with the air of an expert, "Yeah, that's what I would have said. One or maybe a couple of hundred."

Of course, our cauldron stumped the Militaria appraiser. We got his referral card to go to the Metalwork category. The referral card meant that instead of having to go to the back of the line outside the stage-corral, we could go directly to the line in front of the Metalwork tables inside the stage-corral. Honestly, we were grateful.

Some ten or fifteen minutes later, the Metalworks appraiser was almost as stumped. Shari explained that her Aunt Helene and Uncle Jack had lived in Burgos in the 1970's and purchased the cauldron somewhere in Northern Spain. They were told that it had been used to cook food like horse meat and rabbits for Wellington's army in the Peninsular Campaign — the one against Napoleon, 1807-1812.  The appraiser couldn't confirm horse meat or rabbits, or even its use as a cooking pot for the English army. The cauldron has no identifying marks on it. But she did say that its construction and age were consistent with the story. She said it was worth maybe $800.

Shari replied with something like, "Yes. That's about right. $800 is what I saw one going for on the web."

So we had stood and ambled in line for hours, me dragging the heavy, bulky, copper cauldron for several miles at an agonizingly slow pace, only to find out something we already knew? But we did get confirmation that its metalwork was consistent with the history we already knew.

We decided to take the earrings to the Jewelry table lines. We went to the appropriate queue outside the stage-corral, then realized we had had enough and the odds were that the appraisers would be unable to tell us much. What you see on the show is stuff they recognize from an identification stamp. They never show an appraiser being stumped. Our stuff was way obscure. We left, lugging out treasures back to the car.

What you see on the television program is maybe a half or whole dozen appraisals of items brought by people who are shocked when they learn that their odd treasure is, well, a treasure (for insurance purposes). What you don't see are thousands and thousands of other people who, that same day, had dragged their garage sale treasures through hours of lines only to be told their stuff was of minimal value.

What you do not get from the TV show are the appraiser's junk jokes. Can you imagine the variety of stuff that's presented to them? For example, one woman was carrying a huge, plain and ghastly painting of the crucifixion. We saw no appraiser bursting out with uncontrollable laughter. Each appraiser and each AR T-shirt wearing docent was impeccably polite and upbeat. Well, the Metalworks appraiser did joke a bit sarcastically, "Oh, is that what they told you?" But given their long day, their aplomb was remarkable.  Oh but the stories they could tell!

What the television program does elicit is the viewer's philosophical observation on human nature. We value something in dollars more than its aesthetics or history. It's true that Antiques Road Show is interesting because of the history the appraisers reveal about an item, but the punchline is its value (for insurance purposes). What motivated thousands of people was less the aesthetic history of their stuff and more the hope of a substantial dollar validation of its value to others.

Certainly, money motivates the appraisers to spend all day looking at questionable junk. The Show rules prevent them from entering into any business through the program, but serving as an appraiser on the Show does wonders on their resume so they can attract other business. The commissions they earn from finding buyers for valuable items can be enormous.

When we actually saw the onslaught of people with their hoped-for treasures, philosophical observations about people and money were inescapable. Even so, we and hopefully many others left the Show with a better appreciation of what we had. Every item, regardless of its monetary value (for insurance purposes), represents a history, a story made up of not only of the people who had made the item and the times in which they lived, but also of the people who had acquired and passed on the items.

What is most amazing about the crowded tumult that is the Antiques Road Show are all the stories that each person brings with them.