GUEST: My grandfather was from Blackfoot, Idaho, and he had a potato factory, and the people would come to visit him and he would ask them for a mechanical pencil, and that's how the collection started. But my grandfather died when my dad was 14 years old, so I never really got to know him or find out any of those types of things.
APPRAISER: So you don't know his preoccupation with mechanical pencils.
GUEST: Nope-- no, I don't.
APPRAISER: It's just something that was handed down-- your father got it. How'd you get it?
GUEST: My dad gave it to me. They used to be in a box in a plastic bag and so, when I finally got my house, I decided I'd like to put it up on the wall, and so I strung them up, basically.
APPRAISER: So you're the one who put them in these boxes...
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Sewed them in. I mean, this took a long time.
GUEST: It did take a long time, but not knowing my grandfather, to me, this is just... I don't know, it's just really special. It's like having part of my grandfather with me.
APPRAISER: Are there any favorites that you have here? I mean, you have over 100 of them, so...
GUEST: Um, I didn't even know I had 100 of them until you guys counted them.
APPRAISER: That's what we do here.
GUEST: Yes. Just a couple of the fun ones are the Coke and the Pepsi ones.
APPRAISER: Right, the Coca-Cola one right here, with the little bottle on top, and the Pepsi over there.
GUEST: The floating potatoes.
APPRAISER: Yeah, I love the floating potatoes, because, you know, everyone needs...
BOTH: A floating potato.
GUEST: And I have two.
APPRAISER: Mechanical pencils kind of came into vogue in the early 1900s. The pen market has always been way, way, way ahead of the pencil market, and I have people telling me all the time, "Everything is too expensive," they can't buy anything. And yet, pencils have just never taken off like pens have. Which is a good thing for a beginning collector, because it's something that they can build on and grow with. Now, some of the ones you want to look at-- the Coca-Cola and the Pepsis are probably about $75 to $85 apiece. Wow. The floating potatoes are probably just slightly less, because I don't think that market's quite as big as the Coke and Pepsi market.
GUEST: Yeah, I don't think so.
APPRAISER: But you never know. Overall, if you're looking at the entire collection and you're multiplying 125 of these by, say, an average of probably $20...
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: You're looking at somewhere around $2,000 to $2,500.
GUEST: I don't think my dad realized what he gave me. (laughs)
