GUEST: Well, I'm an avid believer of an artist named Charles McGee. And one weekend, I went to an estate sale, and I found this one here, and I thought it was a print. The person who sold it to me sold it to me for over $1,000. And I said to myself, "Since it's a print, that's a lot of money." But I wanted it so bad, so I bought it for $1,000. I gave it to him. Then I found out later on it wasn't a print. It was an original piece of art made out of graphite and charcoal. And I don't know more than that about it.
APPRAISER: So Charles McGee was born in 1924 in South Carolina. And at the age of ten, he came to Detroit, which would be a city that would become very important for him, and likewise, he became very important for the city. In 1969, he put together a, an exhibition called "Seven Black Artists," which was very important in terms of the history of African American art in Detroit. It was a seminal exhibition with a lot of important artists, including himself. After that, he even went on to start his own gallery. And in 1995, he had a one-man show dedicated to him at the Detroit Institute of Arts. So he really became a fixture in Detroit. He's still alive.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Right now, he's 90 years old.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And is still working-- when we look at this, what we see is something that has a lot of emotion to it. What do you think the value might be today?
GUEST: I have really no idea at all. I have no clue. I couldn't even begin to think about what the value would be.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: Because I'm not even sure when it was really drawn, so...
APPRAISER: Right, well, it does look like it's probably from his '60s-'70s period.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: The value that I would put on it today for an auction estimate-- it's a large work-- would be $4,000 to $6,000.
GUEST: Okay, all right. Wow. Well, that's an improvement. (laughs)
