GUEST: I got this cello when I was in high school. I was playing a student cello at the time, and my cello teacher wanted me on a better instrument, so she recommended a luthier from a town about four hours from where I grew up in Florida.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And he had this cello and he put it on a Greyhound bus and we picked it up at the bus station. So I've had it, uh, 25 years.
APPRAISER: You play on it a lot? You play professionally on it?
GUEST: I'm, I do, do not play cello professionally. I have a doctorate in vocal performance. So I, I sing professionally, but I played it all growing up, through college, had a scholarship on it, but I still do play, I, I enjoy playing, and... Um, just not quite as much. The gentleman who we got it from said that he got it from an estate sale. He thought it was quite old. He guessed late 1700s, early 1800s, and he thought maybe it was German.
APPRAISER: Well, he's right about that. It is...
GUEST: Oh, great!
APPRAISER: It's probably, I was going to say between 1800 and 1820.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: In Germany...
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: ...in the Klingenthal region. It's a great size. It's a 29-inch back, which is a little bit unusual for German cellos; they tend to be at least 30 inches, sometimes a little bit bigger. This is a popular size. People like smaller cellos rather than larger cellos as a general rule. So this cello has a label, a repair label from Portland, Maine, in the early 1900s.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: But it has another label inside from the Klemm family's music store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Klemm family was a big family in, in the Klingenthal area in Germany. They made cellos and violins and violas. And this member of their family moved to the United States of America and started a music store. It's really in pretty good condition for its age. It's had a lot of repair work on the top.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: The top of the, of the instrument is made from probably Bavarian spruce.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And the back, sides, and the neck are of Bavarian maple. This is all original. Has a very unique scroll...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...that's very telling. These instruments originally were made in, in a Baroque fashion at that time.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: This was before modern steel strings. These would have been strung with gut strings.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And a lot less pressure was exerted on the top, and they needed to be modernized.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: You either had to graft on a new neck...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...to increase its length, or put a, a maple block underneath the neck to raise it up...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...to make it so that it was the proper string length for modern playing. This one is-- you can clearly see the lines...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: ...along the side of the neck and across the heel of there, where this was raised in that fashion.
GUEST: Oh, yeah.
APPRAISER: This is the original neck. Typically, older cellos sound better than new cellos. (laughs) Certainly to me.
GUEST: I love it.
APPRAISER: Do you remember what you paid for it when you, uh...
GUEST: Um, I believe it was $4,000, and that included the bow.
APPRAISER: And the shipping on the Greyhound bus, probably.
GUEST: (laughing): And the shipping on the Greyhound bus.
APPRAISER: Wow. Well, at retail, I s-- would think that this would be priced at about $8,000 in a, uh, in a violin shop that specialized in cellos and violins.
GUEST: Great.
APPRAISER: I wonder if I could get you to maybe play a few, uh, notes on this... (laughing):
GUEST: Sure, sure, yeah.
APPRAISER: ...so that we can hear how it sounds.
GUEST: (playing short tune)
APPRAISER: Very nice. (laughs) Um, after listening... (people applauding) After listening to the tone of this cello, I, I would raise my estimate a little bit. It's really... It's closer to perhaps $10,000.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: It really sounds great.
GUEST: Oh, great, thank you. (laughing):
APPRAISER: It's really nice.
GUEST: (laughing): Thank you.
