GUEST: About five years ago, we were getting ready to turn the remains of my family's ranch into a museum. So my dad and I went down to this barn, and we're up in the hayloft, and we hauled out this small little suitcase that was kind of falling apart, and in it was this doll and all of her accessories.
APPRAISER: So this was a family doll.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: It is marked on the body "Jumeau." Now, Jumeau started making Bébés in the mid-1870s. Before that, they were making fashion dolls, lady dolls. Their very first series of children dolls we call the portrait Jumeaus, and they look very much like this doll, but it is not a portrait Jumeau. This is more of a transition to a new period in Jumeau making. This is their Bébé. You can't see the entire mark. But you see right there, you see a one. Underneath the one is an E and a J. What the E.J. stands for is Emile Jumeau. What the one means is the size number. And later on, they made another E.J. that says E, and then the number, and then J. Now, this is a lot more difficult to find than that E.J. E1J is about 9.5 inches, where this earlier E.J. model is 11 inches. This leather cap here is the original goatskin wig, where all the goat hair has fallen off. It has hand-cut eye sockets, it has these early threaded enameled glass blue eyes, and it has this great pale complexion. Later on, Jumeaus get a little bit more skin tone. It has finely painted brows. All their Bébés had pierced ears. I do want to note that these lower arms are repainted. It does have the original Medaille d’Or stamp on the torso. They won a medal in the Paris Exposition, and that's why they stamped it Medaille d’Or. And so that dates this doll pretty accurately: 1879-1880. Does that rhyme with...
GUEST: Yes, it does. Uh, it belonged to my great-aunt, and she was born in 1882.
APPRAISER: Now let's talk about the value. We're evaluating it without the original dress, without the original wig, without the original shoes. It's just basically bare-bones doll. So, in this state, it would be an auction estimate of $10,000 to $12,000.
GUEST: (mouthing) I said I wasn't gonna say, "You're kidding me," and I'm not going...
APPRAISER: (laughs)
GUEST: I, I'm, I'm just flabbergasted. I was thinking maybe $1,000.
