GUEST: My grandfather acquired them, and I'm sorry to say that I cannot tell you the history of that acquisition. When he passed away, they came to my mother, who truly loved them, and she saw that I had them upon her death.
APPRAISER: You know who they're by, right?
GUEST: I do know who they're by, and I know that he is a top-notch maritime painter.
APPRAISER: Antonio Jacobsen, right?
GUEST: Jacobsen, thank you, yes. (laughs)
APPRAISER: That's right. You know the subjects, don't you, or you know what they are?
GUEST: The America Cup races, yes.
APPRAISER: Absolutely. Antonio Jacobsen is a Danish artist. It's spelled Jacobsen, S-E-N. And he comes to America, living in New Jersey. Sometimes he signs these with his address, so we can date them by the address. But he actually dated this one 1885. And he has this business painting basically portraits of boats. That's almost all he does. He's painting different people's ships in harbors in and around New York. Did you ever figure out who these boats were at all?
GUEST: No, no, I don't know.
APPRAISER: We know it's an America's Cup race, because we have this little light ship. This is the ship that they all went around. And we know the year, 1885, so we know this is the Puritan and the Ginesta. These, I'm not so sure. We could probably figure that out. That could be known by the pennants that they have. Only one of these is signed, so it's important to keep these two together.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: If you have children, do not separate these. Because this one will validate that one, okay? This one without a signature will not ever be worth as much as the one that's signed.
GUEST: I see.
APPRAISER: But together, they make a pair.
GUEST: We have two sons, and that's what I probably would have thought of doing. I thank you.
APPRAISER: They're going to have to fight for that, yeah. The thing about Jacobsen, you rarely see racing scenes. Most of these are just plain foursquare portraits of ships. And here you have these very active racing scenes. We have the men hiking out on the sides to counterbalance the boat. You have this very dynamic sea. All these make them probably the most valuable Jacobsens that I've ever seen. Because they're known America's Cup scenes, I would estimate these to go at auction-- and this market is very hot right now-- somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER: Yeah, absolutely.
GUEST: (laughs) It's mindboggling. I had no... no idea.
