GUEST: We live in the Black Hills in South Dakota. My parents ran a private museum in a Wild West show, and my dad was born in Deadwood, South Dakota. Apparently, some Lakota Native American ancestry on his mother's side. A lot of the Native people would bring him pieces that they wanted preserved, that they were afraid would be lost in their family. Best of my knowledge, that's where this came from.
APPRAISER: This is a Lakota bag, and it is a doctor's bag. And as you can see, it's beaded on all sides.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: What's a bit unusual is, a lot of the bags are white background, and this is a blue background. It has a trade cloth lining on the inside. There are a couple of ways that we can date this.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: If you look right here in the center, these are metal-cut beads. Now, metal-cut beads really date into the 1890s. So this bag is 1885, 1890.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: And it's not thread, it's sinew. Again, that's one of the ways that we date Native American material.
GUEST: I see.
APPRAISER: One other thing that is an issue of condition. Do you see this area here?
GUEST: Yeah, I think there's another little small spot near the bottom, a couple of beads.
APPRAISER: Exactly. You have a few areas that, that need to be repaired. Now, that does impact on value.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: A lot of collectors would look at this and, because it has this blue background, and because it's basically in great shape...
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: It would be highly desirable for them. And you have almost this transition from Native American into the early settlers in the West.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And you have the blending of those two cultures...
GUEST: Yeah, it's fascinating.
APPRAISER: Right in this bag.
GUEST: Juxtaposition.
APPRAISER: I want to give you a realistic value. And I think you can use this for insurance. In a gallery, you would expect to see this sell for between $5,000 and $7,000.
GUEST: I'm... I'm flabbergasted. For a thing that was just commonplace to me growing up, it was just a family item, that, that's quite a shock.
