GUEST: I bought it at a neighborhood yard sale from a lady, and she said it was her mom's and maybe her grandma's.
APPRAISER: Do you know what it is?
GUEST: Well... (laughs) We have several bets on this. My girlfriend thinks it's a bouquet holder, and I think it's a shot glass.
APPRAISER: All right. Now, how much is the bet?
GUEST: (laughing) A trip. I've got a lot riding on this. A girl's glam camping trip.
APPRAISER: Well, you owe your friend a trip. Let's turn it over and I'll show you what I mean. It's, it is a bouquet holder, and you would hold it like this, you know, if you were a young lady.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Unmarried, most likely, in about 1895 to 1900.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: We sometimes call these nosegays. And a nosegay, as it suggests, is designed to bring a bouquet to your nose. It's less about having a beautiful floral display as it is about having something to perhaps relieve the unpleasant odors that surround you in the 1890s. Now, nosegays spend much of their life not in someone's hand but sitting on a tabletop or something. This one has its own integral stand. So this is an unusual feature, and a clever one. It bears marks on it here which identify it as Russian. These are Russian silversmith's marks. Any Russian silver of this time is of great quality and really quite rare. You said you paid how much for it?
GUEST: Five dollars.
APPRAISER: If it showed up in an antique shop, we think about $1,000, and maybe perhaps $1,500.
GUEST: That is amazing. Mm-hmm. That's amazing. I think I'll keep going to yard sales. (laughs)
