GUEST: It's been in my family since as long as I can remember. Mostly sat on top of our refrigerator at home when I was a child. My great-grandparents-- great-great-grandparents-- also traveled the world back at the turn of the century and I'm assuming it came into the family line somewhere along there. We've got quite a few artifacts from that time period.
APPRAISER: You said this was collecting dust on top of the refrigerator?
GUEST: Yes, it was. And in our household with seven kids and dogs and various animals, it was probably the best place for it.
APPRAISER: And it was collecting dust a lot longer than that.
GUEST: Oh, yes, really?
APPRAISER: This is from the Ming period. Between 1368 and 1644.
GUEST: So I think a little modern dust didn't hurt it too much.
APPRAISER: Not at all. And actually, it's probably from the early part of the period.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Probably 1400, 1450 or so. There were a lot of fakes around in Chinese ceramics, and when you look at this one, you can see this wear and abrasion, and you look at the bottom of the piece, and that foot rim is absolutely worn off, and it's worn off with age. And it was made principally for export to Islamic countries. They believed that this color of ware here prevented you from being poisoned. I've probably seen 1,000 of these.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: You start getting into the value and, again, common. There's a chip there on it.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: The Chinese market is very, very strong right now, but it's not the kind of thing you necessarily collect. When evaluating pieces, the most important thing is craftsmanship. The second is rarity. The last category of the least importance is age. At auction, this is probably worth between $1,500 and $2,000.
GUEST: Wow. That's a lot more than I thought.