GUEST: Got it at a garage sale about five years ago.
APPRAISER: And what attracted you to it?
GUEST: He's fantastic! I think he's just totally good-looking. I don't know if he's, like, a little god or a little demon. On his butt, there's a fox.
APPRAISER: (laughing)
GUEST: (laughing): So, you know, you have to buy something that has a fox butt. You do-- yeah.
APPRAISER: Was this an antique store or...?
GUEST: No, no, it was at a garage sale...
APPRAISER: Garage sale.
GUEST: ...with, um, two acrimonious divorcing people who were selling each other's things for way too cheaply. So three dollars. I don't know anything about him, except he's good-looking in a freaky kind of way.
APPRAISER: (laughs) This is a Tibetan deity.
GUEST: Ooh.
APPRAISER: He's called Vajrapani. Vajrapani was a bodhisattva and one of the eight heart-sons of Shakyamuni Buddha. And he had numerous manifestations, but the two main ones were that he was a benevolent deity or, in this po, pose, a wrathful deity. He's a protector deity. His job here is to protect the sutras in all written documents that are associated with Sakyamuni, with the Buddha.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And so here he is holding a thunderbolt, and he has his hands in a mudra. This gilt bronze sculpture is lacking its base, which would have either been in the form of a lotus base or a wave-designed, again, gilt bronze base. He's basically tamping down all rivals or people who would subvert him from protecting his texts. And it's a cold gilding process-- it's a mercury gilding process, which heightens his robes and leaves his face bare. He also, if he were intact, because he's minus his base, would have had some prayers consecrated or a dedication put inside of him, and then he would have been consecrated by a, a lama. So, you say you paid three dollars for him at a garage sale?
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Well, at auction, even lacking his base, today, as an 18th-century...
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: ...figure, he would bring somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 at auction.
GUEST: (exhales through gritted teeth) Whoa, Nellie! Wow! Real... (exhales) Good job, little guy. (laughs) Yeah.