GUEST: My mother bought this doll in 1930. A lady came door-to-door, and her name was Ella Smith, and that's the name of this doll, Ella Smith, or an Alabama Indestructible doll. It has one more name: a Roanoke doll, because they were made in Roanoke, Alabama. My mother bought this doll for me when I was one to three years old.
APPRAISER: Now, how much did she pay?
GUEST: 50 cents for this doll. And I didn't like the doll and I called it my boy doll and I played with it all the time in the dirt. I never played with my other dolls. They were pretty and nice, and I still have some of those. I did decide to keep it because it was one of the first dolls I had. And have you ever had the doll appraised?
GUEST: No. One time, when I went to Roanoke, Alabama, a man said, "I'll give you $2,000 for it." And I said, "No, no, no," so I just kept it. And that was years ago. Maybe, I don't know, eight years ago.
APPRAISER: And tell me about your other doll.
GUEST: Well, this was my great-aunt's doll. And she willed it to my aunt, which was her niece, because that aunt had a big doll collection. I have all those dolls now. But this doll was hers, and it's a Colombian doll. And she was living in New York at the time.
APPRAISER: You think that's where she got it, was in New York?
GUEST: Right, I think so.
APPRAISER: Well, we are in Alabama today, and it's pretty exciting to see an Alabama baby.
GUEST: That's right.
APPRAISER: And you can see she's a stockinette doll that's been hand painted. And she has the painted boots. Sometimes these can be pink.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Sometimes they've been found barefoot.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And I've seen them kind of a gold mustard color. She's actually in pretty good condition. She's got a little wear and tear.
GUEST: You do think so?
APPRAISER: Yes.
GUEST: She looks pretty bad to me.
APPRAISER: A little hard for painted cloth fabric to stay together, so she's actually pretty good condition. Usually they're stamped on the body, not always. You had an offer, you said, of $2,000. I did. That was a fairly generous offer.
GUEST: Was it?
APPRAISER: With her condition, she would be worth more like $1,500 retail.
GUEST: Well, that's good, that's all right. That's good.
APPRAISER: Still a very valuable doll for 50 cents.
GUEST: I think so, too.
APPRAISER: Your Colombian doll is actually also a Southern doll...
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: ...and not a Northern doll.
GUEST: Oh, really? Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: But this Southern doll is from North Carolina, and it's called a Maggie Bessie doll. The doll was made by two sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth, therefore Maggie and Bessie, in the Moravian community of Old Salem, which today is part of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And they only made about 500 of these dolls. There is documentation. They actually kept a journal of every doll they made and sold. They made them from the 1890s to the 1940s, originally sold them for about one dollar. In the '40s, they sold for $6.50. The difference on this Maggie Bessie is that he has a German body. It's made of kid leather with bisque hands.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: The sisters usually made the whole doll, but in this case, they did do doll repair, and what happened is it had a bisque head, most likely, that got damaged. So your aunt or her family took the doll to the sisters in Old Salem and they made the doll a Maggie Bessie head.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And your doll is actually a boy, and the way I can tell this is because he has a side part hairdo. If he was a girl, he would have a center part.
GUEST: That's cute.
APPRAISER: Boys are very, very hard to find. Oh, well, good, that's great. I've seen two or three. They didn't last. Normally the boys' eyes are brown and not blue, so that's unusual too. Well, a retail value for this very rare North Carolina doll would be between $12,000 and $15,500.
GUEST: You'll have to say that again.
APPRAISER: $12,000 and $15,500.
GUEST: I can't believe that.
APPRAISER: Maybe more, because the boys never show up.
