GUEST: As a child, my father saw his grandpa go to the mantel, pick the pig up, uncork it, take a swig of whiskey, put it back on the mantel.
APPRAISER: It was made by the Anna Pottery in Anna, Illinois, between mid-1860s to the 1880s. The Anna Pottery opened in 1859 and closed around the turn of the century. And it was founded by two brothers: Wallace and Cornwall Kirkpatrick. They made hundreds of thousands of stoneware pieces, mainly utilitarian, but they also made a bunch of oddball pieces, and one of those oddball pieces were these flasks, these pig flasks. This flask is an atypical flask for the Anna Pottery pig flask, because it has so little writing on it. "Some old French brandy in a hog's..." Most of these flasks that were made, were made with an elaborate map of railroads and towns throughout the Midwest, often with Anna, Illinois, as the sort of center. Your flask is not as good as the railroad flask, because it's got less going on for it, but even so, I would think that the flask is probably valued in today's market, at auction, somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000.
GUEST: Wow. That's great!