GUEST: My great-great-grandmother lived in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, in the late 1800s. They moved to Chicago, and they were a pretty well-to-do family. Then they lost everything they had in the Great Depression.
APPRAISER: They didn't lose this.
GUEST: No.
APPRAISER: And you don't know at all how the damage occurred over all those years.
GUEST: No, I don't.
APPRAISER: So this is a Tiffany chamber stick. The bronze is a little bit as is, but not enough to really hurt the value. So we want to talk about what hurts the value. The shades are Tiffany opalescent glass. So one of them is chipped, and one isn't. What I'd like to do, if you could help me, is to unscrew the screws.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: And take these shades out so we can see the perfect one and see the damaged one. And they just lift out. And I, I-- I have-- I'm the winner. I have the damaged one.
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: So this is your fitter rim.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And yours should be perfect. We're going to turn this over, and we have the Tiffany Studios mark right here with the number 5640. And that's a pattern number. These are circa 1905.
GUEST: Circa...
APPRAISER: Now, if we'll put this back down.
GUEST: Great.
APPRAISER: And if you could carefully put your little end in. You've done this a few times, I know.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: And even though we're missing one screw on the one I'm doing, it still holds it tight enough, but you definitely want to replace the screw.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: The bottom parts are bobeches. And they hold blown Tiffany glass in there. So when we get talking about damage on important pieces, we have to get down to the nitty-gritty of damage. You can see that this particular bobeche has cracks and chunks out of it.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: It happens to be one of the most difficult restorations you can find on a piece.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: About all you could do is find a new bobeche. Not an easy task. What happens to value when these things occur? In the condition that this is in, in a fine retail establishment, you would find this in a range of $3,000 to $4,000.
GUEST: Wow, that's, that's...
APPRAISER: That's pretty good for all that damage.
GUEST: That's very good. Yes, it is.
APPRAISER: If it's possible to find a bobeche, now your piece would be worth $12,000.
