GUEST: My father actually found it in an antique mall and decided that he liked it.
APPRAISER: And then gave it to you.
GUEST: And then... yeah.
APPRAISER: Well, isn't that wonderful? This is a Frederick Carder Steuben piece, and Frederick Carder had his start pretty much at Stevens & Williams in England. And he came to the United States in 1903. This particular piece is a cased piece, and it's mirror black-- which you can see here-- mirror black over an alabaster lead base. This is called "The Hunting Scene."
GUEST: "The Hunting Scene."
APPRAISER: And I was so thrilled to be able to show it because we finally have a vase that men will just covet.
GUEST: (laughs) This is wonderful.
APPRAISER: It's interesting with Frederick Carder. He would have an idea-- let's say in the month of January-- and it would be an entire year later before that would come to production. So he would think about it for over a year and put these patterns down. This particular pattern, and again, I want you to look very carefully. I'm going to turn this around a little bit so you can see the animals and all of the trees and the shrubs. It's 12 inches tall, and it's number 2683-- that would be the model number. And the date that this started to be made was 1927, probably till about 1932, so it didn't have a very long time range.
GUEST: How much of this got made, do you know?
APPRAISER: Very little of it's on the market. The market sort of came down a little bit, and I think people are waiting to put it back out on the market. It's very hard to find this particular piece on the market. Can you tell me what he paid for the piece, maybe what year he...
GUEST: I think it was around 1996 that he got it, and I believe he paid, like, $79 or $80 for it. It wasn't ex... I mean, it was dear at the time, but not, like, expensive.
APPRAISER: I just cannot believe that anybody was lucky enough to find this for $79. We dream about things like that happening. This particular piece for retail would be in the value range of $3,500 to $5,000.
GUEST: Whoa. (laughs) Wow.
APPRAISER: So imagine...
GUEST: Yeah, that's good.
APPRAISER: I guess we could say it was a good buy.
GUEST: Yeah, good eye, Dad.
