HOST: The Statue of Liberty has looked out over New York Harbor since 1886. The statue's creator, Frèdèric Auguste Bartholdi, called her "Liberty Enlightening the World." ROADSHOW appraiser Eric Silver enlightened us on our visit to the New York Historical Society, where we saw a number of antique Statue of Liberty souvenirs and works of art. Eric, so many people have stories about the Statue of Liberty, either as tourists visiting New York and it's an icon they've hoped to see, or as immigrants coming here to America. It all was the brainchild of Frèdèric Auguste Bartholdi, a famous sculptor in France who thought this would be a great symbol of French and American unity, and the hope was that this would be up and erected and standing tall for the centennial of the United States in 1876, but it didn't go like that, did it?
APPRAISER: No, they had to raise a substantial amount of money: $250,000 for the statue itself, and for the pedestal, which was designed by the American architect Richard Morris Hunt, they had to raise $100,000. They did exhibit the full-size arm and torch at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and after the centennial, it was in Madison Park in New York City for six years.
HOST: It wasn't until 1886 that we actually got the statue here.
APPRAISER: That's right.
HOST: She's 305 feet tall, making her the tallest free-standing sculpture in the country. But we have some smaller versions here, so tell me about these.
APPRAISER: As part of the fundraising effort, Bartholdi made these reductions. He made them in four-foot, three-foot, two-foot and one-foot. And they were produced in France by a company called Avoiron, and the examples we have here are the three-foot and the two-foot versions. These are made out of a material we call spelter. It's also referred to as white metal or pot metal. It's primarily the metal zinc. Very soft, workable material. They are quite rare. The three-foot version came up in 1985, just before the centennial of the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, and it brought $121,000 at auction. But in 2013, one of the same size brought $37,500.
HOST: That's a significant drop. I would imagine there was a boom during the centennial.
APPRAISER: Exactly, a lot of collectors vying for these things. The one-foot version, the last one brought $3,000, so this two-foot version would bring somewhere between $3,000 and $37,500.
HOST: Well, it's really wonderful to learn about the Statue of Liberty and the history and see these wonderful, wonderful replicas here. Thank you.
APPRAISER: Thank you.
