GUEST: My husband bought this plate at an estate sale. It's part of a pair. The man having the estate sale said that he and his wife bought it from a Russian countess and it belonged to Alexander III, Tsar Alexander III.
APPRAISER: About how long ago was that, and where?
GUEST: It was about 12 years ago here in Birmingham.
APPRAISER: And what did you say when your husband brought home these plates?
GUEST: "Surely that's not real."
APPRAISER: Really?
GUEST: He paid about $400 per plate.
APPRAISER: $400 a plate and you didn't know for sure if it was real. Does he think they're real?
GUEST: He doesn't know for sure. But either way, he said they look nice in our dining room, so...
APPRAISER: Okay, that's fair.
GUEST: Worst case, they're just pretty accents for the dining room.
APPRAISER: Sure. The first thing we want to do when we hear something like this-- did it belong to a tsar or someone famous like that-- we try to figure out if it's true or not, and I have to be honest with you, I just want to tell you up front, it's absolutely authentic.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So it is real. If we look on the front here, we have a monogram of the letter A and a crown, and that's the cipher of the Tsarevich Alexander. And this has been decorated with a blue background and fancy scrollwork. And this is a really elaborate plate, but not over the top. And there's a mark on the back. There's an A with Roman numeral three beneath it, and that's for Tsar Alexander III. And "92," and that's for 1892. So that's when this plate was made.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: This is from a very specific service that was made for the tsars. This service is known as the Farm Palace Banquet Service. And the tsars had dozens of services of china.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Well, when the Russian tsar was overthrown, a lot of things were sold off by the Russian government, and a lot of things were given as gifts over the years, a lot of things were probably borrowed or taken, who knows, by servants or whatever. After the revolution, visitors to Russia could buy things that belonged to the tsars.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Now, this particular plate would have a retail value from a specialist dealer of Russian antiques of between $2,500 and $3,000.
GUEST: Wow, per plate?
APPRAISER: Per plate, so you've got two, and you can just double that.
GUEST: Wow. That's great news.
