APPRAISER: Well, I understand that this artist is your ancestor.
GUEST: Correct.
APPRAISER: What was his name?
GUEST: Julius Jacob. He's from my mother's side of the family, and he's from Germany, and from what I understand from what I read about him, he was a very prolific landscape artist, and this is a sketchbook that he took with him when he went traveling in Europe and did sketches. Some of them are finished, some of them aren't.
APPRAISER: It's very interesting. This is... basically, it's almost like a visual travelogue of his journey across... the Alps, wasn't it?
GUEST: I think it's mostly Austria and Switzerland... And Germany, of course.
APPRAISER: And here we see... this is one sketch. And this is the Matterhorn, and he's been very meticulous. They're all dated. I want to turn this over. If you could help me. I'm rather nervous with this book. It's falling apart. Some of the pages are starting to fall out. The binding's gone. But as we go, you can see all these fabulous drawings, and the detail is just extraordinary. And here, they're not all pencil drawings. Here's one that's done in pastel. There were some slight alarm bells went off-- I have to say-- when I was looking at these pastels and also the drawings. If we look on the opposite side here, we can see what's happening. Now, fortunately, there's paper between most of the drawings. Unfortunately, the pastel, as it has a tendency to do, has been lifting. So it's coming off. It's been a little bit scuffed in places, and I do urge you to do something about this. You need to see a paper conservator and have this book treated properly and have these probably fixed so that they don't start smudging, which is a real problem with pastel. If we go a little further on... I also found that some of them in fact fold out. Look at this. Here's this whopping big drawing. And just look at this detail-- it's extraordinary. And you can imagine him perched up aloft with his pencil and paper, and sketching these mountain ranges. So as a topographical record of that time, it's terrific. Now, I'm terrible in math. I'm the first to admit that. But I went through, and I was looking at the drawings and mentally toting everything up. So I can't tell you exactly how many drawings are in here. But there's quite a number of them-- varying in quality and size. But generally, I would say, of a pretty good quality. I came up with a figure, altogether, that was somewhere in the region of $25,000 to $40,000.
GUEST: Really? Whoa!
APPRAISER: You know, even... let's say, the less good ones, are going to be worth $200 or $300. And some of the better ones, like this, I think would make over $1,000.
GUEST: Wow! My brother has a whole bunch of his. I've got to call him when I get home.
