antiques road show

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I'm sure I mentioned this before, but I took some Nodder/bobbleheads of Mao and Kruschev to have them appraised at the Antique Road Show and the lady damn near busted my Kruschev she was shaking it so hard. She appraised them at $10 each. I just laughed at her and asked if Ted Hake was around to laugh at her too. I sold both of those nodders on the Nodder exchange for $1700. These "Appraisers" on the ARS really have no clue...except for the people from Lelands and maybe Leigh and Leslie Keno. My mother is a doll collector and she took some of her dolls to have the doll guy...(whoever that is?) look them over. She was sorely disappointed to find out that she too knew more than the so called expert...an expert that she once admired. And I'm almost certain that they are there to lowball you because every one of them has their business card on the table in front of them when they are "appraising" your item. I took some Old Judge/T206 and other assorted prewar cards and had Simeon Lipman look them over. He liked what he saw, but my story wasn't good enough for TV. You basically have to be unaware, and shocked at the value of your item to get on TV....or at least fake it.

PS if you ever go and you want to get the free T-shirt as you're leaving don't make up your phone number on the form they have you fill out because they'll ask you to repeat it after you hand the card back to them.....they got me on that one.