GUEST: I brought my grandma's old dress. It's based off of the Pearly Queens and Kings.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: But instead of being called a Pearly Queen, she called herself Pearly Pat. She sewed every single button. I don't know how long she spent, but it seems like it'd take billions of years. She sewed everything onto this and then she got to wear it around to charity.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: This thing weighs at least 50 pounds.
APPRAISER: It is very heavy.
GUEST: She'd walk around outside. She'd do it for hours on end. She'd fundraise a lot of money for, like, hospitals, churches.
APPRAISER: It's a a jacket and a skirt, floor-length skirt. And your grandmother did an amazing job of sewing all these mother-of-pearl buttons. And the suit itself, the basic black suit, probably dates to 1970. And it could have taken her years to complete the button pattern on it. You also said that she did it to raise money for charity, and another way that we know that is, on the back, in buttons, she spelled out, "All for Charity." So she was not only a very talented seamstress, with all this button work and making the designs-- she's got a fish and butterflies-- she was also a very generous woman. There's probably 1,000 buttons on this suit. It's a real showstopper. As you said, generally worn by the Pearly Kings and the Pearly Queens, who were predominantly known throughout England. There's not as much of that type of activity in this country. But they had these elaborate button-covered costumes. She's got some great figural buttons on here. There's a fish. There's a heart-shaped button. She's got a cross, a cat. The more you look at it, the more interesting things you can find. Her work is just really wonderful, and we think that an insurance value for something like this would be $2,000.
GUEST: Wow, oh, wow.
APPRAISER: Some of the buttons on the jacket have great value on their own. These very large ones on the front are probably worth almost $100 each. Some of the others on the back are $35. So, if you appraised it almost as a button collection, it would probably be between $1,000 and $1,500.
GUEST: Wow, that's a lot of money for just buttons. If we brought her button collection, we'd probably have to fill up the whole car...
APPRAISER: There's still more buttons-- you could make one. (laughs)
GUEST: Oh, yeah, I definitely could.
