Major funding for Arkansas Treasures was provided by the Moving Image Trust Fund.

Additional funding provided by Cherokee Nation businesses Esse Purse Museum And by viewers like you.

Oh, there it is.

The set for Arkansas treasures.

Oh, man.

Tell you what.

Let's go inside before the party starts.

Let me show you.

Because I know, I know, it's quiet now, but you just wait.

There are Arkansans who are converging on the historic Arkansas PBS studios, and they're bringing with them their treasures.

Like.

Like Bryan, the lights, the light.

There we go.

They're bringing things like furniture and pottery and potpourri.

And my particular favorite books.

Hey, last year someone brought a book and they bought it for $15.

Come to find out, it was worth $25,000.

Hey, but that was last year.

What's going to happen this year?

We're about to find out.

I'm Craig O'Neill, and welcome to the second season of Arkansas Treasure.

Oh, I think you got your money's worth.

You created your own treasure.

You understand?

People are going to care when this comes up.

It's my favorite.

Oh, hey, yo.

Let's go.

All from all over the state, they come bringing different treasures.

They have different backstories, different stories.

But they're all unified by the same question.

What is this word?

Holy cow.

Wonderful, But that's surprising.

That is a surprise.

They're the people that will answer that question.

Our evaluators have arrived.

Experts in their field.

Amory liqueur lead evaluator collectibles and silver cadence gear.

Books, paper and ephemera Roy Dudley painting, drawings and Arkansas specific items Janice Lee, furniture and decorative arts Tommy McPherson, pottery, glass, and for Michael Stanton for the museum Laura Stanley rule and Grace and brilliance evaluator and stage manager.

All right, here we go.

Let's see what our evaluators have found.

Welcome to Arkansas treasures.

I'm so happy to have you here today.

Thank you.

Ma'am.

Please tell me what you've brought to the show.

I brought a first edition copy of The Shining, and there's also the first Ray.

Okay.

Oh, did I say sale?

Okay.

I paid the full price over Ashton.

What was that.

Then, Sam?

Oh, I think you got your money's worth.

I think I hope I did good.

I think I want to go spelunking with you.

All right, try.

Is indeed a first edition of The Shining.

And the reason?

First edition, first run.

And the reason we know it's the first run is because in the back of the book, in the gully here of the signature is our 49 that identifies this book as being one of the 20,000 printed in the very first printing of The Shining.

This was Stephen King's third book, and the Stephen King collectors out there are many, and, they love to buy their Stephen King books.

It's in pretty good shape, I would say.

It's in very good condition in bookseller terms.

You've got the original dust jacket.

There's no writing in here.

There's no foxing on the pages.

So I would say that this book would bring about 1800 to $2200.

Wow.

Is that about what you thought.

Walmart is for?

You got your money's worth.

I think I did good.

Well, thank you so much for bringing this in.

Thank you man.

Thank.

You.

You're asked.

No.

Okay.

You know, I want to thank you for coming out to Arkansas Treasures today.

And when you when you came up to my table, I was like, it's not surprising that we get firearms coming in, but yours is a little different.

Has a really interesting story behind it.

Can you tell me a little bit about what you brought?

It's a German pistol that, it is a family story.

Was it came from World War two.

Okay, but.

I realize it's a lot older than or two.

It is indeed.

Yes.

And, my uncle brought it back, and my my grandmother was closing our house, and I found it.

And father's.

It was.

Just in buried in the closet, laying.

On the floor.

Oh, man.

Okay, well, you know, you're right.

It is a much older gun.

It is it is a late 19th century German.

It's a great revolver.

And it was probably used in the German Navy because we see the lanyard hook here.

Lanyard, loop on the end.

And that is an indicator of the Navy.

But he's in World War two, and he finds it there a lot of times when allied forces would come into towns, they they would call in all the firearms in the town.

And, very frequently they were destroyed.

But your uncle must have been an officer.

He was a captain.

Right?

All right.

Officers frequently had the right to select or pick firearms out of the pile.

I've had a number of shotguns that came back over the years that were unrelated to anything to do with World War Two, but they were absolutely marvelous, marvelous pieces.

If you go back.

This is a big caliber gun.

You said one time you had shot it.

Yeah.

We put a 45 ball and shot it.

Okay.

You probably a little bit.

How did you shoot it?

We, put the ball in and pull the hammer back and put it on the other side of the tree.

Oh, okay.

So we, ourselves, it just being hand.

Just lose the hand.

Rather the head of the whole thing.

Well, the 45 caliber was probably a little over.

It's really probably designed for about a 44.

But it's a it's a big, powerful hand gun.

It's in remarkable shape.

You know, we don't see these come up at auction very often, even in gun sales.

It's a fairly rare, rare gun in today's market.

If it were to come up at auction.

I would not be at all surprised to see it in the 2000 to 2500 range for the guard.

That's good.

It's in fabulous condition.

And it's date of about 1881 is what it was created.

So, really a neat piece all the way around.

And I want to thank you for bringing it out to Arkansas Treasures today.

Sadly.

Hey, guys.

Welcome to Arkansas treasure.

Thank you.

Tell me what you've brought today.

We have brought two paintings by him.

Gentleman.

Name of Gil Steel, I believe it's how it's pronounced.

He was a costume designer who won Oscars in the 1940, 1950.

But he painted these when he was only in his 20s.

Yeah, and I understand they're Chinatown, and it's very interesting that the figures are sort of in relief and particularly shadowy.

And the street scenes are much more vivid.

And, he was very talented, and he was a costume designer for many movies at MGM.

And you said he won two Academy Awards, one for Samson Delilah and one for The Heiress, which is a very famous movie.

But these are great.

They're they're oil paintings, he was very talented.

Unfortunately, his life was cut very short.

He was killed in a flash flood in Los Angeles in 1952, so his life was tragically cut short, sort of at the peak of his career, because he went to the Oscars 49 and 50 and passed away in 52.

The Oscars are only existed for costuming starting in 48.

So he was right there on the.

Right at the beginning of it.

Well, and those classic movies still live forever.

Oh, yeah.

And and I love his his work.

I love his framing.

They're very interesting.

We found a very similar one to this film with the Chinese lanterns, in it and online.

And I think it's safe to say these are probably worth somewhere between 12 and 1500 each.

Now, how did you come to own them?

They were actually given to my mother back in the 50s.

Okay.

Sometime late 50s and, they've been hanging in the house, my house, for, well, ever since, various locations.

So was your mother a native of Los Angeles?

She was she was out in Pasadena.

Thank you for bringing such interesting things in.

Which is a wonderful double collectible.

We have a great oil painting, and then we have all the movie history with it.

And a famous fashion or costume designer.

Just like you.

Were.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for looking at it.

For at any time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome to Arkansas Treasures.

Would you like to tell us what you brought in today?

This is a Japanese lantern that I inherited.

Well, my husband inherited, and, he's gone now, and I think it's time to pay attention to this.

Okay, so where have you had this lantern?

In your home.

It's just been in a bedroom lately.

We don't have a large display type thing at our house.

We have lots of activity, so it really has not had the attention that it deserves.

Okay, well, just in case folks on the camera can't tell.

This stands about 35in tall.

It is made of cast iron and it is a tree.

Lantern is known as the kabocha total in Japanese.

And I looked online and these date back to the 1950s.

That makes sense.

Okay.

And so if I were to, put a value on it and before I do that, do you have any idea of what it might be worth?

You guys know?

I kind of glanced through things back.

So if I were to insure this, I would put an insurance value of 1500 to $2000 on it so that if anything were to happen to it, that you could replace it.

Okay.

That's a lot, a lot to be sitting in the corner in the bedroom just waiting to be appreciated.

So yes, we thank you for bringing in this, this lovely piece that, with the pagoda and the leaves, it's quite heavy, but it is quite lovely to look at.

Oh thank you.

Nobody would be proud, you know.

We would be proud.

Okay, well, this has already been a showstopper.

I know as you carry this through the studio, everybody wanted to have a look at it.

I know it's something that I.

When I first saw it, it was incredible.

Just because I love music, I love punk rock.

And this kind of brings it all together for me.

Tell me where you found it.

So we found this on an online auction, probably the summer of two, 2023.

And when I saw it, it loved everything that I liked about it.

And I was like, oh, let's go ahead and put it in our collection.

Are you a punk rock fan?

I am an aging punk.

Rock, okay.

And specifically Ramones.

Yes, I love you.

Love punk rock.

You love the Ramones?

Absolutely.

Well, what draws us to this poster is the vibrant colors of it, the pink and the rock right here.

I've seen versions of this.

I haven't seen one this big.

I know they they made some this big and a smaller version, but I haven't seen the big one.

And they made some versions that don't have the rocket.

They say had some versions that had the text all down here.

Okay.

But with the rocket and the text like this, it's unusual to find this.

So any punk rock collector or any Ramones collector would be thrilled to have this.

Great.

Do you?

It was their third studio album.

Okay.

And this was from 1977.

It was printed in London.

Oh, wow.

Do you have any idea what it's worth?

I have no idea.

That's why we came on here.

Okay, well, I think given the popularity and the continued popularity of the Ramones, I would put this between 300 and $450.

And if you got two Ramones collectors up for it, I think you could get more.

That's exciting.

It's in fantastic shape and it's a great piece of punk rock history.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

That's awesome.

The Arkansas treasure I apprecia Hello and welcome to Arkansas Treasures.

Thank you.

Tell me what you brought today.

This is, a painting that I found on eBay.

Okay.

But I saw it, and I thought that that's a really nice little painting.

It is a great little painting.

This painting really speaks to me.

I love the tonal, sort of monochromatic piece of art.

And I love that the.

It's a really heavy palette technique with the paint.

And the painter used a really, really heavy palette knife to get sort of that depth of the snow.

And I think your husband said it exactly.

He really captured a dreary, snowy day excellently.

And what I've discovered about it today, the artist is Carl Ranger and he is a German.

And he came to America.

His his father was, a artist.

His grandfather was an artist.

And they were also taxidermist.

So they had a great interest in nature, animals, so forth.

He came to America in 1894, and he decided that, he wanted to try his hand painting American landscapes.

And he was invited to go on a moose hunt in Maine.

And he discovered his passion.

And after 1895, he moved west.

And he, is pretty renowned for painting the northwest, the west and the scenic views of the West.

This is really odd.

It's not dated, but it is sand on the back that it's in Connecticut.

So I think this is around the 1894 time period after he got to America, but before he went west.

And this is a rare, style for him.

Most of his work is is much clearer.

So I think in 1894 he was trying to experiment and find his way, and he definitely found his way by going west and sticking with the nature.

He died in 1959.

His work is very collectible, and there's a lot of people who like it, particularly the Western genre.

I personally think the snow scape is just really swell.

Tell me what you paid for it.

100.

100.

Okay, good.

That's what I did.

I don't think I paid that much.

Right.

Yeah.

That was what you were.

You're going to not.

We're probably value it around with auction records.

Somewhere around 35 to $4500.

Wow.

Yeah, well, great find.

And thank you for bringing that in.

And sharing it with it.

And now you have it out in your house.

I do.

Yeah.

Put it in a good spot.

I will I will thank you.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate you coming in.

Yes.

Well, thank you for bringing in this picture.

Can you tell me what.

So I actually found this in my grandmother's home after my grandparents passed about ten years ago.

We were cleaning it out, and it caught my eye.

And so I kind of snuck it out before anybody else could get Ahold of it.

And so I've just had it at the house, and I didn't know her a lot about it until we got ready to come here.

And we I think you saw my face when you pulled it out.

And I was thinking, oh my God, I'm getting ready to have to give someone some bad news again.

Yeah, because, a lot of jadeite has been faked, and the basic style is so popular that they're going to continue faking it.

But we decided to put this on the air for a couple of reasons.

One of which is yours appears to be genuine and it is fairly valuable.

And also, I thought we'd talk about the process that I used to be comfortable telling you that that was the case.

It took us just seconds with the computer to pull up real repro and find, a ribbed version of this that is extensively faked and very documented, and the collectors know exactly how they were made and which features are different between a real one and a fake one.

And this one didn't turn up on real and repro, which was the first good sign.

But since it didn't, and since they're capable of knocking stuff off in China any minute and dropping off a boatload right to stay current, I wanted to check with what was going on in the market elsewhere.

We looked, completed sales on eBay, current offerings, and started with the cheapest ones that were available and sold and worked our way through, and we found various permutations of fakes.

This has been faked, by the way.

I've seen entire antique booths all over America full of fake jadeite, which is where the concern comes from.

So by going backwards to eBay records and we couldn't even find anything for sale until we hit about $250.

And you saw the same thing I did.

I'm laughing because there's some for sale for 800, and everything between 250 and $300 for sale right now was broken.

Yeah.

So what we were not wanting to see was a slew of these being offered at 65 or $70 out of the Blue Robo listings on auction sites where there's going to be 32 listings for $90 a shot, which is what happens when they come straight off the boat from China.

And the dealers who are willing to misrepresent just throw them out in the world as fast as I can.

So by checking what we basically proved in reverse is that they're not straight off the boat from China.

And of course, you've had this one for ten years in the family anyway.

So that said that, let's just move on from authentication of this form of the jug to the value.

And I mentioned we saw some for sale and we found completed sales from 585 to 800.

When we looked more closely.

And more recently we also found sales ranging from 250 or so.

In December to 400 or so more recently, and some one just in the last week or two, just saw one for $95 as fast as I could.

Yeah.

Now, as an appraiser, we're trained to ignore the high and lows and look at, you know, the middle value, the fair market values, what equally knowledgeable people might agree to, you know, buy and sell something for work.

And if no one's under duress, and someone selling this for $95 in today's market is either not as knowledgeable, maybe they're under duress, or they're worried it might not be genuine and they just want their hundred dollars quick, right?

That's not what fair market value is, nor is the person who puts it up for 800 and thinks people who collect this have money, and one of them may pay me 6 or $800, and I'm going to wait.

Right?

That's that's a replacement cost type value.

Hoping someone just pays more than typical.

But as you start looking at the 250 to 4 range, you start hitting stuff where you get people who probably know more about what they're doing.

And we talked a minute and I decided that fair market value for this is probably in the three $5,400.

Right.

You still have the $95 someone's dumping fast.

Some of the people at 250 are either dumping fast or more likely, they and eBay's I is looking at those broken ones that are priced 250 and 275 and getting confused and telling the people listing it's worth 250 to 275.

Right?

My suspicion is the people who, you know, have sold them for 250 or so when they're routinely selling for four and 500, may have been misled by eBay's AI.

The misuse of Google Lens and eBay's AI is costing a lot of people a lot of money.

Hopefully, we'll always be able to do the research and figure out the difference.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome to Arkansas Treasures.

Are y'all having a good time?

Yes, yes, thanks a lot.

Tell me about this great piece of southern folk art that you brought in, because I know there's all kinds of great stories with it.

Yes.

This is a painting by miss the Aurora hamlet.

She is a primitive artist.

And, lived in my hometown, which is Oxford, Mississippi.

My dad was her attorney, and I remember as a kid, my dad asked Mr. Aurora if my sister and I could go over to her house, and she showed us all around.

We got to see where she painted and this big studio upstairs.

It was it was fun.

It was really neat.

And that was in Oxford.

That's in Oxford, Mississippi.

And tell me the significance about this painting and y'all's loss.

Well, Mr. Aurora gave it to us for our wedding anniversary, and, we're having our 50th anniversary this year.

So she gave it to you in 1975, and here we are in 2025, celebrating 50 years.

And we have a great painting.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, and, I did a little research on her and she unfortunately she passed away in 1977.

So this is one of her later works.

She is known to be a primitive artist from Mississippi.

So she's a southern folk artist.

Maybe even considered an outside artist.

I love her work.

And I found a very, very similar, one of the same tree, except with a white dog rather than a human figure.

And a lot of her work is small.

Now, you saw in the studio that she also produced big works.

Big works, big works.

Okay.

So so the small isn't necessarily indicative of her style.

It could be different sizes.

And that she had visions and dreams that she painted as well.

Yeah, I.

Saw some, I saw I was looking I saw some images from her light Vision series, and they're sort of, you know, they're.

She had some visions.

She had Ma vision.

Yeah.

Angels and, Yeah, devil wings and.

Yeah, all kinds of things that were pulling at her both ways.

Well, this is wonderful, and I love it.

Now, do you display it in your house?

Yes.

Yeah.

Good to have a little special space.

In a.

Bedroom.

Okay.

Now what I'm going to tell you may want to upgrade it to the living room because the one that I'm saying is very similar with the hot dog just sold in New Orleans for $17,000.

Oh, my.

That.

Is a surprise.

So I think it might need to be upgraded to the living room.

Yes, this is just one of my favorite things I've seen today.

I think your story, having known her a wedding present and you've had it for 50 years and little.

But now.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I'm very, very proud for you.

And it's wonderful to see her work.

I've never seen her work before.

Oh.

So congratulations.

Thank you.

And thank you.

Wonderful.

Foreign.

I'm delighted.

We're delighted.

With that.

Yeah.

Good.

Okay.

Wow.

I just wanted to make her laugh.

Got it.

Okay.

Here we go.

Okay.

What an event this has turned out to be.

We have barely scratched the surface.

I mean, there's.

Oh, we got a chance to talk to Amory.

Let's go over there.

It's been a busy day.

How's it going?

It's going beautifully.

You know, it is always an extraordinary event when you come out and you get to see some really neat stuff, and we get to talk to some really interesting people.

And I love the fact that people get to see behind the scenes at the show, at their PBS affiliate station, because for most people, it's the first time they've ever built a setting like this.

The more you see, the more you want to see.

That's phenomenal.

Is that happening with you?

Well, yeah, I mean, I've I've been doing this a while, both in my own business and with several PBS stations around the country, and it never gets dull.

It's wonderful to have A.D.D.

and be in this business because it's something new all the time.

And that takes us to this thought.

We can't wait to see more on the way.

Join us again next time for Arkansas Truckers.

I love Arkansas PBS.

We're fans of PBS.

See all of that and more as we continue with another very derivative of that.

By the by.

Then you can put subtitles in there.

We're all about.

PBS.

We moved here, oh, almost 30 years ago, and I've learned a lot about the state through watching PBS.

Here's the deal.

Whose shoot.

We love.

The show's about local people.

Yeah, I did a whole song for Easterseals, and I got up and did 2:00 in the morning.

I did my impressions, and a guy called and said, I'll give $50 if you'll get that jerk off of you.

I say, come on, dad, be nicer.

But this show inspires you to sing.

Think just inspires you to stink.

Every piece brought in is a part of this puzzle.

And how does that piece?

It's an educational tool.

We need more of it.

How do we live without Arkansas PBS?

Major funding for Arkansas Treasures was provided by the Moving Image Trust Fund.

Additional funding provided by Cherokee Nation businesses.

Esse Purse Museum, and by viewers like you.