GUEST: Well, it was a photo that was in our home. It's from my husband's grandfather, and he worked on maps and he helped work on a map that was in the book 90 Degrees South, and this photograph was in that book.
APPRAISER: This is a carbon print or a pigment print of a ship called the Terra Nova. The title of the photograph is "The 'Terra Nova' Icebound." The photographer, his signature is on the lower right here, Herbert G. Ponting, "H.G. Ponting." And the byline reads: "Scott's Last Expedition." Ponting was something of a colorful figure. He started out as a journalist. He photographed during the Boxer Rebellion in China, went to the Philippines, and in 1910, was designated photographer of the official British expedition to Antarctica. He worked with Commander Robert Falcon Scott on the ship the Terra Nova, which left New Zealand in 1910 for the South Pole. On the ship-- and we can see some of the figures here-- were crew members, Siberian ponies, dogs, and motorized vehicles. Ponting was photographing all along: onboard the ship, as the crewmen left the ship. The expedition reached the South Pole in January 1912. Scott and his officers died and were designated heroes, having, of course, reached the South Pole. These photographs are extremely desirable today as fine art images-- you can see the beauty of this photograph-- as historical documents that chronicled the expedition. Do you have any idea of the value of something like this?
GUEST: No, we just have... we've had it hanging on the wall in our green room.
APPRAISER: In the auction market, I would estimate this carbon print at $7,000 to $10,000.
GUEST: No way. I didn't realize it was anything like that.
