GUEST: I found it online and I bought it.
APPRAISER: So what did you see about it that you like?
GUEST: It was a butterfly table, and I had never seen a butterfly table on the ROADSHOW.
APPRAISER: Well, let's open, let's open it up, because you don't see too many. One of the most important things on the ROADSHOW that we talk about is when to know when something's right and when there's, know something's not right. Come on down...
GUEST: Is it a reproduction?
APPRAISER: It's not a reproduction-- let's flip it over, gentle...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: I'm going to show you, real carefully, let's come forward. It's not a reproduction, but it's one of the pitfalls of buying online, some... Sometimes it's good, but you're not looking at it firsthand. If you look right in here, this is oxidized wood. You can actually scratch it. Here, you can't make a mark because it's not oxidized. It hasn't been exposed to air.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And the top here, you can see, is pretty fresh. So that's, that's a replaced skirt. What this is supposed to be is a 1720-1740 butterfly table, right?
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: So those, those weren't next to each other for that long, okay?
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: The second thing, the most important thing on this, are these butterfly wings.
GUEST: Uh-huh. Yes, yes.
APPRAISER: Now, the reason is that, of course, it was made out of an old board that was already scratched. No scratch would stop right there at the seam where, where two pieces of wood are added together.
GUEST: If it was a real piece there, would that have been in one piece of wood?
APPRAISER: It'd be all one piece of wood, almost certainly.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: But for, but, but certainly all the scratches would go all the way through and both sides would be scratched. There's no scratches on this side.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And basically, you have a wonderful piece and, that actually, basically, through the years were, was faked-- this form has been faked since the 1920s.
GUEST: Oh, gosh.
APPRAISER: So somebody faked it up, but it, it's worth less than $3,000. It's worth about a tenth of that. And now, you're going to have other things that you found, that you found that are worth ten times what you paid.
GUEST: It's worth a tenth of that.
APPRAISER: And in this case, yeah, in worst case, $300. And that's probably being generous.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER: Now, and I'm, and I'm telling you that just so we can learn from it, you know?
GUEST: Ah, jeez.
