Community

Spirituality

Trash or
Treasure?

Beth Shalom Sisterhood hosts its own

`Antique Roadshow.”

I s that family heirloom really a
treasure or just a sentimental
chatchke (knickknack)?
When Congregation Beth
Shalom Sisterhood's Fall Membership
Dinner featured a "Trash or Treasure"
program Oct. 24, about half the 100
guests — including me — brought val-
ued objects for a quick evaluation by
David McCarron, senior appraiser with
the Frank H. Boos Gallery in
Bloomfield Hills and a participating
appraiser for the popular PBS television
program Antiques Road Show.
.
My treasure was a spice box, black-
ened with age, used for celebrating
Havdalah at the end of Shabbat. It's
made from a small hollowed-out gourd
set in a silver frame.
Family lore says it came from an
ancestor who traveled from Poland to
Palestine in the late 1700s or early
1800s. Pirates who captured his ship
found him useful because he had some
medical knowledge. After he escaped a
few years later, he discovered the gourd
in his pocket and had it made into a
spice box.
The verdict: It really is worth some-
thing, said McCarron, though he esti-
mated its date of origin to be about 100
years later. The value would depend on
whether the frame is silverplate or solid
silver, which would require a more
detailed analysis. But it was worth at
least a few hundred dollars at auction,
much more in a shop.
Generally, selling an antique at auc-
tion or to a dealer will bring in half—
or less — of what the same object
would cost in a shop, McCarron
explained. The replacement or retail
value is what appears on an appraisal
certificate for insurance purposes.
Many of McCarron's one-minute
appraisals were greeted with grins of
delight or grimaces of disappointment.

„TN

11/2
2001

62

Rabbi David and Alicia
Nelson's wind-up gramo-
phone, made in 1906, and in
good condition, would bring
$600 to $800 at auction and
was worth about $2,000
rein il, he said. ("Ahhhh,”
murmured the audience.)
But a copy of People's
Home Library from 1910,
and an 1826 copy of
Introduction to Arithmetic
weren't worth more than a
few dollars each ("Awwww,"
came the sympathetic
response.) Books are pro-
duced in bulk and people
rarely throw them away.
Unless they're very old, very
rare or have some unusual
significance, they usually
have little value, McCarron
said.
Bloomfield Township res-
ident Linda Lublin's two-
volume leather-bound set
of Fenelon's Les Aventures de
Telemaque, printed in Paris
in 1790, features gilt edges
and fore-edge painting, a
technique that produces a
picture when the edges of
the page are fanned slightly.
That's the sort of thing
book collectors like, said
McCarron, and the set
would likely bring at least
$1,500 to $2,000 at auc-
tion.
Bobby Schare of Oak
Park glowed after McCarron said her
large yellow glass plate, made in
Czechoslovakia in the early 20th centu-
ry, would bring $300 to $500 at auc-
tion. "I thought if I could get $25 for
it, I'd be lucky," said Schare.
But Esther Davidow of Oak Park was
disappointed that McCarron said her
needlepoint dining room chair was
worth only a few hundred dollars. "I

Top:
Barbara Lewis of Oak Park with her
family heirloom — a spice box made
from a gourd set in a silver frame.

Left:

Bobby Schare of Oak Park, Marcia
Abel of Southfield and Nancy
Firestone of West Bloomfield admire
Abel's antique hand-operated vacuum
cleaner.

Below:
Treasures await appraisal.

Pho tos by Jerry Abel

BARBARA LEWIS
Special to the Jewish News

was ready to sell it for $5,000!" she said.
McCarron urged anyone interested in
starting an antiques collection to simply
buy what they like rather than consider-
ing how much the objects are likely to
grow in value. In general, breakable
items such as glass and porcelain appre-
ciate more rapidly, he said, but "wonder-
ful items will always go up in value
eventually."

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