GUEST: I liberated this from a rubbish dump a few years ago in Hawaii. A close friend of mine was cleaning out his mom's house after she had passed and the house was big, his time there was limited, so they were throwing out a bunch of stuff. He said I could have anything I wanted in the rubbish pile.
APPRAISER: That's great.
GUEST: So I took this.
APPRAISER: Well, it's a tribal rug. It was made around 1900 on the border between Afghanistan and Persia. It's called a baluch, and these were rugs that were made by these tribespeople for the marketplace. These were sold quite a bit in the early part of the 20th century, and they were one of the least expensive rugs you could buy.
GUEST: I see.
APPRAISER: So what's happened is the entire market has flip-flopped, and the tribal rugs that were inexpensive at the time are now worth more than the fancy city rugs that were made at the same time because people view them as individual works of art. Now, this particular piece, it's in actually very good condition.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: And the ivory background is very desirable. But the rug is so dirty that you can hardly even read it as ivory. So the first thing you want to do is get it washed, because it's going to be a completely different rug.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: If you had to go out and buy this today in the retail market, you'd have to pay about $2,500 for it.
GUEST: Wow, that's nice. I'm going to have to call my friend, you know, and let him know what the value is, and I'm going to do that tonight.
APPRAISER: Okay.
