GUEST: I collect Art Deco. And I would go to estate sales, usually on the weekends. And I went to this one house sale, and I really loved it. And so I bought it, and I paid $65 for it. I've had it in and out of a drawer ever since. And how long ago was it that you bought this?
GUEST: About 1995.
APPRAISER: It's a lovely piece. And you are correct. I mean, it is typically Art Deco. The black, the red, and this sort of olive green color. It is silver on the outside here. And you've got this sort of foliate motif here. When I saw this, immediately, especially because of the enamel work, I thought it was by an important maker from France named Paul Brandt. And it is.
GUEST: Oh my gosh!
APPRAISER: So I found the mark inside the case, and it is by Paul Brandt. But there's also another interesting history which I know you know as well. And what I'd like to do is show the inside of the case. Many times these cigarette cases have dedications inside of them. The two names that are on here are
Roger Williams and Lewis Yancey. It's engraved July 27, 1929. Now, Williams and Yancey were pilots, and they left Old Orchard Beach in Maine heading for Europe. And they broke the air record in 1929, which is the year that this was dedicated. So it says "24 votes for honey." And I tried to do some research to see if there was any record of that, but I don't know for sure. So that's an unknown factor here. Yancey was also very much involved with charting the course. And early on in the course they had to fly blind. They were in cloud cover for 20 hours. So he really was ahead of his time. So the piece would date from the late 1920s. It's engraved 1929. There's another dedication from the 1930s, so… it's right around that same time period. It's a wonderful piece of history. There's sort of two values here. As a Brandt cigarette case, because he was known for enamel work and lacquer, at auction, a piece like this would probably be in the $2,000 to $4,000 range.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: But add to this the aeronautical background, I would expect at auction you could probably expect somewhere between $6,000 to $8,000...
GUEST: You're kidding me.
APPRAISER: …At auction. I'm not kidding you. It's such a great piece. It's got everything that you want. It's got history, it's got a great maker, it's Art Deco. This hits all the bells.
GUEST: It sure does. That's marvelous.
APPRAISER: I'd take up smoking, seriously. If I had this, I'd take up smoking again.
