GUEST: I got it from a French couple who had been dealers in Paris. When the Nazis came into Paris, they packed up all their artwork and put it in storage and left, and they got a Nazi SS guy to come in and mark the crates, something that kept them from being opened during the war. After the war, they went back and brought this stuff to the United States, and they were selling it.
APPRAISER: Well, this is a very unusual Daumier print. We see his lithographs a lot, and typically, they're printed on newsprint because they were published in La Caricature and other French journals of the time. And he was really the first artist to really explore lithography, which was a new medium at the time. This is on white paper. This is what you want for lithographs from this period for collectors. And then this is a very early print. This is from 1834, when he'd just begun his series, and on top of that, it's a wonderful subject, because you have a political scene with a very scolding-looking judge looking down at the prisoner. And his Gens de Justice, which he did much later, are very desirable, and this has a judge in an early print. It is very scarce. At auction, the value would be $1,000 to $1,500.
GUEST: Wow, and I probably paid $25 for it.
APPRAISER: That's terrific.
GUEST: Yeah, it is!
APPRAISER: If it didn't have the center fold, the crease, it could be worth up to $2,000 at auction. It's a wonderful example of his work.
