GUEST: This is the original stainless steel scale model of the jail cells of Alcatraz. It is a working model. It was made by the Stewart Iron Works Company in 1932, and they were eventually awarded the contract for Alcatraz and built all the jail cells there. This is an example of some of the bar stock that was used to build the actual bars at Alcatraz.
APPRAISER: This is actually what these would have been made out of.
GUEST: These are the verticals, yes... And they were made so you couldn't saw through them, but eventually, they actually did get sawed through.
APPRAISER: Well, that's fantastic. These, you brought along.
GUEST: These are actually the master keys to Alcatraz. We have about 20 of them. I brought in a sample of them today. I know that the one here opens up the mess room hall, and the other one opens up a typical jail cell door.
APPRAISER: When Alcatraz was closed, you came and you...?
GUEST: Actually, the company kept a master key of every jail cell that they made.
APPRAISER: Oh, so they could make copies.
GUEST: Mm-hmm, and they had a secret registry that they kept with the Department of Justice.
APPRAISER: Well, this is fantastic, I love this. Well, it's a model, but it's also what we'd also call a salesman sample, because it would be used when you wanted to demonstrate it for other jail, penitentiary places than Alcatraz. And the thing that I love about salesman samples is they are highly detailed because they really want to show exactly how this works. I mean, the other thing that's great about a salesman sample is when actually see the name of the maker on the object, which is this wonderful plate here. The whole thing with a jail cell door is that you can open one or a whole bank of doors, or just one individual. And there's a complex mechanism in here that... let's see, you've got the doors closed... And there we open the center door and these stay closed. With different adjustments in here, you can open the whole bank to let everybody go to the mess hall, when they opened it up.
GUEST: Whatever the warden wanted.
APPRAISER: It's just fantastic. We're gonna close up the... I know you've brought some other material here. I think it's neat that you also brought a photograph of Alcatraz, I guess the same period when this was put in, which was the mid-'30s.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: How did you come by all this?
GUEST: Because I'm head of design for the company, I've become really obsessed with the 150-year history of it. And I collect all things Stewart Iron Works. I collect furniture, I collect light fixtures, gates, fence, ornamental iron. When they stopped owning the company, the Stewart family themselves still had individual items, and Sherry is a very good friend of mine, and she gifted me this piece.
APPRAISER: Well, I think at auction I would fully expect it to bring, minimum, $15,000.
GUEST: Oh, wow!
APPRAISER: It's really terrific. It's got all... everything going for it.
