GUEST: It was in my mother's basement, I'm not exactly sure how it was passed down.
APPRAISER: Would it have belonged to grandparents, possibly?
GUEST: Probably. Oh really, uh huh.
APPRAISER: Well, it's a fascinating American document. Now, you know when Missouri became a state of the union, don't you?
GUEST: Yes, 1821.
APPRAISER: Okay, absolutely, and this map was actually printed in 1822, and it was printed by two Philadelphians named Henry Carey and Isaac Lea, and they issued an atlas called A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Atlas of the World. And this is their geographical, statistical, and historical map of Missouri. It was engraved on a copper plate, and you can see the plate mark here, going around, and it was printed in black and white, then it was colored by hand with watercolors. Then they put it through another press and printed this text. Now, Carey and Lea were considered political economists, and in a time when a lot of politicians and economists were saying, "The world is falling apart, and everything's going to rack and ruin, and we're going to suffer from overpopulation, and plague, and famine," they were saying, "The United States is the most wonderful place in the world, it's just a great place to live, there's so much extra land." And they wrote glowing reports. Of course, the real kicker to this particular map, is that it's one of the earliest maps of Missouri. Notice it says, "List of Governors" here, and how many governors? One.
GUEST: Just the one.
APPRAISER: 1820. He was governor of the territory, he was governor of the state at the beginning. One of the things that one should know about a map like this, is that it was once part of an atlas. And you can often tell that because there's a center fold here, where the map was folded into a book. Now, that's why it survived. It would sell anywhere between $600 and $700 on the antique map market today.
GUEST: Great! It's interesting, I had no idea.
