Stuff You Should Know - How Antiques Work

Episode Date: January 7, 2011

At what point does something become an antique? Could that old piece of furniture in the attic be worth millions of dollars? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down all the Stuff You Should Know about antiques. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Yes, it's about antiques. I'm Josh Clark. There's a very eager, strangely eager, Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

The podcast. The 100-year-old podcast. At least makes us an antique. Oh, yeah. You can tell, though, from the hair in my ears that I'm getting up there. Yeah. Nose hair, ear hair. That's the joke about men, right? Is that hair leaves the places you want it and accumulates where you don't want it. So, Chuck, you know how you think about certain things and you come across like a concept like antiques. You're collecting and buying and selling of old stuff. That's my definition, but I think it's pretty much dead on. Sure. And you think, okay, this has always been around. And you stop and think, no, that's probably not true. So, when did it start? And I am very

gratified to say we know when the popular obsession with antiques began. Yeah. Isn't that weird? I didn't know this until I read this. And it actually ties in with the other one we're recording today. I know. Strange moves. So, here's a little piece of trivia for you that will eventually appear on a quiz. How are antiques and the volcanoes podcast related? Strange glue. Herculaneum and Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius binds these two, right? Yeah. So, tell them about it, Chuckers. Well, there was a big old eruption in 79 AD of Vesuvius and it pretty much buried Pompeii in the sister city, Herculaneum, between about 20 feet of junk of ash.

We'll get to that in the volcano podcast. Which is not, you know, that's a bad thing for all the people there. But it's a bad thing who have died screaming. Yeah. But it preserved them dying screaming. I used to be so obsessed with that. With Pompeii. With anything I could get my hands on. And it was like, look at that skeleton crawling toward the sea. Look at this guy who was caught in a boat. Really? It's awesome. Yeah. I loved it. So, many years after that, Charles III of Spain in the early 1700s said, hey, let's go dig this stuff up and see what we can find. And it turns out they found a bunch of well-preserved antiques. And they became like, wow, old stuff is cool. Right. So, these two entire cities were basically frozen in time and protected from looters.

And they started bringing these treasures up. And it actually sparked the neoclassical period or movement, I guess, in Europe. And that was like the antiques, right? And then in America, so it's worldwide antiques, or at least western popularity of antiques, right? Yeah. What about American, right? We can actually trace the moment when Americans got interested in antiques, too. I love this. Very cool. Once again, our 1776, you know, America's a young budding country. 100 years later, we celebrate our first little centennial in Philadelphia. And they said, hey, you know what? We've got 100 years worth of stuff we've been making. And let's showcase this. And all of a sudden, people were like, the same thing. Like, wow, this is kind of cool. I like this old

stuff that we've got. That's exactly right. And that sparked an interest in early American furniture, I think, to start with, right? Yeah. I'm going to start buying it. I'm going to start collecting it. And it became a commodity. Right. So the 1876 exposition was what sparked an interest in antiques in the US. Yes. And if you... So we're going to focus mostly on American antiques. And by mostly, I mean exclusively, right? Well, a little Europe thrown in. Okay. So not exclusively, but mostly was right. Sure. But if you are an antique collector today, and you are a very puritanical, one could say antique collector, you're probably going to say that anything prior to 1830 in America, and probably anywhere, is an antique. Yeah.

Anything after... It's kind of up in the air. And the reason being is around 1830, the Industrial Revolution started. People stopped using like dovetail joints that they sawed by hand or whittled down by hand and using wooden pegs and started using machines. Yeah. Well, not stopped, but yeah. Well, it fell a little way from mass manufacturing. Exactly. So this advent of mass manufacturing led to a huge boom in production coupled with this new interest post like 1876 in early American furniture. And so a revival of these styles, right? Yeah. So you have mass manufacturing and a revival of interest in early American styles, meaning that you have a lot of reproduction furniture being produced.

Yeah. But reproduction furniture is what you want is the real deal. Right. Which is period. So period is something made in the style of the period in the age, in that age. Like Queen Anne. Sure. Chip and Dale. Not Queen Anne reproduction, or Chip and Dale reproduction, which by the way, is the sexiest furniture period in American history, if you ask me. Those little cuffs and nothing but. Yeah. Yeah. All I picture when I hear that is Swayze and Farley. What a classic one. Hepplewhite, Sheraton, Duncan Fife, just to name a few. Yes. Of our heroes. Yeah. Those are the big ones. And I'm sure if you're really into this, you could be like Duncan Fife. Yeah. I go for Duncan Hines. Yeah. Duncan Sheik. Remember that guy? It sounds really familiar. He was a singer.

He had a song. Which one? I can't remember. He was, he's a one hit guy. Okay. Well, Chuck. Yes. If you are getting into antiques, right, you probably already know all this stuff. I'm way into it. But let's say, let's say that you, are you really? No. Okay. I'm into walking around antique flea markets, but I'm not, I don't know, you know, what I'm doing. I just like tooling around and poking things. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I think Billy Bob Thornton wrote possibly one of the greatest lines in the history of film when he said something about, he made Dwight Yolkham say in Slingbley that he can barely drink a glass of water around a piece of antique furniture. Dwight Yolkham was

so awful and so funny in that movie at the same time. It's a good line. I like walking around antique places too. I don't like encountering antique wheelchairs or antique medical equipment. Oh, I love that stuff. It's so freaky. Well, I don't use it, but yeah. Well, you really shouldn't. Like poking. It's probably not sterile any longer. Yeah. But okay. So let's say that you are not completely versed in antiques and what to look for. We're going to give you a brief primer here. And since we are owned by Discovery Communications, aka the Discovery Channel, parent company, we get to draw from the company well and talk to people once in a while who have chosen Discovery specifically in this one,

a guy named Paul Brown who heads up a show called Auction Kings, right? Yeah. He owns Gallery 63, which is literally just up the road a piece from a San Roswell Road. Yeah, I'm going to have to visit that. And he is an auction king. I've seen it myself with my own eyes and we talked to him actually. So he's going to come in a little bit here or there. Yeah. When you hear someone that sounds like they're on the telephone and it's not us, that'll be Paul. Right. Yeah. We'll team up a little better than that. But that's a good rule of thumb, I think, for this one. Certainly. But what Paul says and what it expresses in this article, how antiques work, is that the first way to differentiate a real antique, a period piece from a reproduction piece and kind of get an idea

of how much value this thing is going to hold ultimately is just by looking it over. That's the first best thing you can do is take a really good hard look at it, right? Yep. So what are some of the things we're looking for? Well, just at first glance, I would say overall condition, like what kind of shape it's in. And this is not to determine whether it's real or fake. This is just, if you're assuming it's a real antique, because apparently high quality fakes, don't be afraid of that because it's pretty rare to pass one off, to try and pass one off. Right. Although Paul said in our interview that he just came across one, right? Like he had gotten off a call with a buddy who informed him that something he was thinking about or somebody was trying to sell

to him was in fact a fake Faber J. Yeah. Like right before we interviewed him. Yep. So he said it does happen. It's very uncommon, especially with furniture too. Sure. It's so difficult to do this. So what you're really looking for is not necessarily a counterfeit, but a reproduction, right? Exactly. So here are a couple of tips that Paul gave us, right? A cursory glance will tell a lot of tales. I mean, even to an inexperienced eye, if you open up the doors and you see their nails or holding it together rather than dovetails and mortise and tendon joints, then you know it's probably a later manufacturer. Evenly cut nails were not even made until this century, not this century left until the 20th century. Probably that

most nails were handmade. And so if you got a lot of evenly cut nails that were driven in there with a nail gun, you know, that's a big, that's a big tip off. So there's a couple of things to look for, right? Yeah. I mean, craftsmanship, how it was put together is, I mean, they're still craftsmen today doing things in the old school way, but by and large, when you look at the joints and the tools that might leave marks. Yes. The hardware used like nails like Paul said. Yeah. So that's what you're going to look for to determine if it was, you know, probably a reproduction or not. And then what the stuff is made out of is actually going to leave a lot of clues too, specifically with furniture. The wood used is very important, right? So for example, Chuck,

you've got like walnut was very popular with Queen Anne, which apparently ran from the early 18th century to about 1750 when Chippendale took over, right? Yes. We know so much about the wood used in antique furniture. It's amazing. Mahogany came into fashion after that. Right. And then Cherry, which is sort of like Mahogany, it's just a little paler, very strong and abundant here in the old US of A. Yes. So that was pretty popular as well. Yeah. Oak has always been popular. Yeah. Oak was especially popular among Europeans before the beginning of the 18th century. Yeah. And then it had some renewed popularity in America around 1900. I personally don't go for oak that much. I like either really pale, blonde, maple. Oh, I hate blonde. Do you really like maple?

I just don't like pale. I don't like blonde wood. It reminds me of Ikea. Yeah. I think it's one of the reasons I like that look. Yeah. It's like minimal and it's really cold outside. And then Chuck, there's also pine, right? Poor pine. Pine is, oh, let's just go ahead and say it. It's the poor person's wood when you're manufacturing furniture. Yeah. Your country folk, your rural, you just want a chair to sit in. Maybe you're really good at making a chair. So 150, 200 years later, somebody wants to pay top dollar for that. But for the most part, pine is used for the undersides, the backings, the drawers, the insides of a piece of furniture, right? Yeah. But wood floor is actually hard to pine floors. That's what we have in our house.

Those are like a find, apparently. There's a guy down in Florida. Apparently, there's a logging operation in the 19th century in Florida and they would fell this pine and float it down the river to the sawmill. Every once in a while, something would be, it was so dense, it would just sink. And it happened a lot and they just leave them. But for some reason, the composition of the water, I think it was like this brackish combination of sea and fresh water. Somehow preserve these trees, these huge trees. And there's a company that brings these things up and salvages this 19th century hard pine and sells it for like top dollars lumber. Yeah. We have had this exact conversation before. It was a while ago, though. It was a long time

ago, but it bears saying, I think. I think I'm going insane. Because it's so cool. So it's like, why are you laughing? I know. But I like pine, so that's why I said poor pine. Okay. Plywood and particle board, that's a dead giveaway, that it's not an antique. Don't be stupid. As are staples, we should mention. Staples are a hallmark of 20th century manufacture. Exactly. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course,

yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of tax. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Condition of the wood. You should look at that. Well, it shrinks. Yeah. So it shrinks and it leaves a lot of clues. Right. So, you know, the bottom of a drawer, you know how in a really good construction, it's kind of slatted in. Yeah. So as it shrinks, it's not going to be flush any longer. Yeah. And not only will that shrinkage be a dead giveaway, but that portion that the shrunken part, the now exposed part,

should be lighter in color than the stuff that's been exposed to underwear for the last 200 years. Underwear. Yeah. So you're putting drawers. Also, you know, they used to use pegs a lot of times to assemble furniture. So if the pegs have worked themselves out a little bit, that's probably a good sign that there's been some shrinkage going on. In the underwear drawer. In the underwear drawer. What else? We talked about pegs, dovetail joints. I think Paul mentioned dovetail joints and mortise and tenon joints are really, you know, a hallmark of early craftsmanship. So you look for those tools. Hand sanding is going to look different than machine sanding. Yes. As is hand saw, rather than like the perfect straight edge of a saw mill saw. You can actually, if you know what

you're doing, you can kind of roughly date like the age of your piece of furniture by the saw marks, right? Yeah. So you're going to want to look at the back of a chair or the drawer. It's an inconspicuous area that they probably didn't bother to sand. If there are straight irregular marks, that's pre 1830. If there's straight even marks, that means that it was around 1830 saw mills were cutting the straight even marks. Perfectly straight. And then circular marks came in about 1850 when the industrial revolution was really starting to take off. Yeah. And people like, our furniture doesn't have to be square anymore. Yes. Exactly. You know, it really took me and this one was when I read this sentence. Nails were originally made, forged individually.

I mean, does that really hit home? You think how many nails it takes to build a structure? Yeah. And the blacksmith had to make every nail one at a time. That's why the blacksmith was usually the man to go crazy on the rest of the town and kill everyone in their sleep. Yeah. Well, something made it heavy metal probably. That's what I would use. Where are we here? Buying them? You want to talk about buying antiques? Yeah. And we should probably say that, you know, if you're into antiques, especially if you're really an antiques, you're probably doing at least partially for profit, right? Yeah. Hoping to maybe make a little money off of it. Well, Paul pointed out that you should buy, you should only buy something if you like it.

Excellent point. I thought that was a great point. Usually you're looking, you know, you think it's worth something as well. Right. And we asked him about value. Like, how does an antique get valued? And here's what he said. For me, worth is what you can get somebody to pay for it on a given day, not what an, you know, insurance company or a museum or in, you know, an, quote, expert says it's worth. So, you know, the biggest factor is supply and demand. How many people in the audience want it? You know, I'll bring something up that five people want. It's going to bring more than somebody might have thought it was worth. If it comes out and it, you know, only one person wants it or nobody

wants it, whether it's going to bring less. But the reality is that that's what it was worth that day in this building. So, you know, it's just kind of a fluid dynamic. Worth is a real funny thing. It's, it's like trying to nail Jello. So that was Paul once again. Josh. Did you tell he was on the phone? He was on the phone. If you, if you don't know anything and you want to learn something about antiques, here's some advice from howstuffworks.com. To start buying things willy-nilly. No, go to a museum because museums are a great place to you're going to, you're going to know it's real. It's authenticated by pro. It's probably going to be grouped by either the manufacturer or the period. So you get like a really

specific view of what you're looking at. And then probably be identified by the maker and you might have a docent there that has some like cool history. So that's a really good place to learn about this stuff. Yeah. There's usually somebody there. You can say, what does this mean or why is that there? And they go, move along. Yeah. And then the next thing you know that chair isn't there any longer because you just expose it as a fraud. Yeah. Much like the Brewster chair, right? Yes. Have you heard about this? Did I talk about another podcast or something? No, that's known as the greatest hoax of all time. Greatest antique hoax of all time. Greatest antique furniture hoax of all time. Let's get specific here. Huh? Oh, really? Is that I didn't

know that? Well, think about it as a chair. Surely there's other antique hoaxes. Well, this is the greatest. This is the Ali. This is the OJ Simpson trial of antiques. So the Ford Museum was taken by a chair that was supposedly created by pilgrims from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, right? Yeah, but they weren't taken by the chair. They were taken by Lamontaine, Armand Lamont. He sounds like a fake furniture guy. He sounds like a forger. Armand Lamontaine. Yeah. Faked the Brewster chair just to see if he could fool the experts and he did. Yeah, which apparently is quite popular and especially was in the 70s. There are hoaxes all over the place. Have you seen F's for fake? No. Okay. You know, our buddy recommended this movie.

It's the Orson Welles documentary on art forgery. Okay. So we saw it, right? You mean I watched it? Oh, really? It's very. Was this his TV show? Interesting. No. It's the who's. Well, I thought you were talking about the Orson Welles TV show when he had Bert Reynolds on. No, but it's in a similar style. It's really edited very strangely. But the content of it is Clifford Irving, the guy who faked the biography of Howard Hughes. Oh, right, right, right. Also wrote a biography on a great art forger named Elmere. And Elmere is like this guy who's like, I just do this to show that all of the experts are idiots and I've never signed anything. And I just toss everything and his biographer who actually turns out to be a hoax himself,

Clifford Irving, is like, that is not true. That guy is fraudulent and he's making money off of it. But it makes a good point that we, you said in the museum, you're going to be able to probably rely on it being legitimate. Sure. That's where you can really learn. The point of this movie is that's not necessarily true. I mean, like if you can pass something by the experts, yeah, then it's legitimate in just about everyone's eyes. And that apparently is fairly rampant in the art world. Yeah. Well, the Brewster chair, though, they put it through an x-ray and they were, and they were all of a sudden they're like, ah, yeah. La Montagne. Yeah. La Montagne had said, like, you know, I faked a chair like several, a couple decades ago and you bought it. Somebody

bought it and now they use that chair, though, as an example of how to be, not be duped, I guess. What are they, what does Oprah call that, a learning moment or a teaching moment? Yeah, I think something like that. Yeah. So, if you have learned a few things here and you do want to buy antiques, where should you go? Well, you said the museums and then you're ready to buy and just start anywhere. You can, if you go to a small town in small, in America and you close your eyes and just start walking forward and don't get hit by a car going around the square. Yeah. You're going to run into an antique store. Yes. And depending on the size of the shop, if it's like a smaller shop, then that means probably that the shop owner picked out all

the antiques because it's things that they like and things that they think will sell. Or like a flea market, they'll usually have little booths and you can rent out your own little booth and sell stuff. So, you'll probably get like a big wide variety there. That's right. Where else? Well, auctions. If you want to add a little zing to your antiques or your antique buying experience. Experience, right. Go to an auction. The auction is very much like an experience and you get to buy stuff too, right? And we talked to Paul about this. We'll bring him back in a second. But if you want to really hone your handling skills or just know your limits, you could start off in a small store and just go basically abuse the store owner.

And then hone it. Go to a couple of auctions and bada-boom, bada-bing. You might be ready. But this is what you're in for. It's not nearly as scary as we've been made to believe, apparently. What auctions? Yeah. Listen to Paul Chuck. The auction can be by its nature. Almost like the Hollywood Theater. I don't know what happened exactly, but a lot of people are intimidated by the auction process. What I always encourage people to do is come in early. Maybe come in the week before and take a look around preview. Take some measurements. Kick the tires, so to speak. Open the door. See if the dovetails. See if you're buying or if you're potentially buying what you think you're potentially buying. Ask questions because we're always here to answer

them. And if I don't know, I'll say I don't know. But if I do know, I'm happy to share and say it so is my staff. But as the auction approaches, you come in, get settled in, and kind of watch it, kind of get a feel for it. It's a rhythmic thing and each auction is dynamic and fluid. It's almost organic the way it kind of grows. And you see, okay, these things are going high. Those things are going low. Kind of watch it a little bit. And then just don't be intimidated to bid. Don't let it get to your head. Just kind of play the game. It's like going to the casino sort of. You kind of get a rush out of it. It's fun. So that was some good advice. They'll usually have a display period where you can go check it out up close before the auction. That's right.

And if you've never been to an auction, it can get caught up in it, you know? Have you ever been to an auction of any kind? Uh, silent auction at a church. It was very low pressure. I mean, one where the guys, you know, doing the whole thing. Cattle auction. I've been to those before. Did you buy? For each cattle auction. I kid you not. Did you buy a cow? No, I just watched. I'm just a fan. So you want to check it out beforehand, know exactly what you want, what you're willing to pay, and don't get caught up in the auction fever. Because as Paul pointed out, and as anyone knows, something is worth what someone's going to pay for it. And if you got all these people bidding on, it's just like eBay. It's the same thing. You get all these. I never understood

the eBay people that, you know, an auction's for like a week. And on day one, they start throwing bids in. Yeah, I've never understood anything. Well, sellers love it because it just drives up the price. Right. But I mean, as a buyer, it doesn't make much sense. Not at all. On eBay, I go in the last, like, second and a half is my first bid. Right. And we also talked to Paul about, you know, what you should buy or if there's something in your home. And he was saying like, it's very surprising how something that seems like it would never sell or something you take as ordinary commonplace because you grew up around it and it's now in your home, you walk past it every day, that that suddenly takes on value when a guy like him creates a market by taking a seller

and putting them together and putting his stuff in front of buyers. Right. So you're absolutely right. I mean, like, things do have value even if they don't seem like they have value. And for sure, you can make some dough at an auction or you can spend a bunch of dough at an auction. You can also do an internet auction, which requires a tremendous amount of faith. Yeah. I mean, eBay has their little rules of you got to be on the up and up, but you can really kind of do anything on there if you want. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to

distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival

the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's antique shows, you know, that are, you know, like this weekend in North Georgia, there's a show and the Georgia mountain fairgrounds. It's a big deal. Everyone brings their stuff and kickbacks from them once a year. And I just made that up. And obviously estate sales, keep your eyes peeled in the newspaper and Craigslist and stuff for estate sales. You get some good finds. And the cool thing about estate sales, especially if you if you find an estate sale and the sign for it is on like a piece of poster board with

black sharpie. That means it's a yard sale. That means that it's well, it could be there could be some really great stuff there and it's being sold by people who don't know anything. Yeah, that's true. And there's probably no reserve price, which is the minimum bid that will be accepted. So yeah, estate sales can be treasure troves, especially if you like stuff that smell like the elderly. Right. Can we say that? I think so, mothballs. Yeah. If you're checking things out at these places, look for a signature of the maker to help authenticate it. That's kind of a dead giveaway. If you see like a brand on furniture, like on the underside or on glassware and ceramics is usually on the bottom. What else? Well, yeah, that's a good

point that there's there should be a signature there because the difference, the only difference really between a reproduction and a counterfeit is the stamp of the craftsman. Yeah. Right. The mark of the craftsman saying like, I made this in 1995. I'm not trying to pass it off as something made in 1895. Sure. Yeah. Well, sometimes there's other documentation too that someone will include like this is a photo of my great-great-grandmother with this chest of drawers or shifu robe. And here's a holding a Confederate pistol. Right. And here's it's included in the will from 1895 to and there's a letter from my great grandfather to my great-grandmother about the shifu robe. And I'm going to give you all this saying bust up that shifu robe to help

to help document that it is in fact or something. Yes. And if you have that much documentation, you're in like Flynn because apparently being able to prove provenance, especially famous provenance can apparently just drive the price up. Oh, yeah. There's a story in this article about a person who attended the 2002 Tucson Antiques Roadshow event and showed up with a ute first phase chiefs blanket, which is rare enough. Like this thing was appraised at 350 to $500,000. Yeah. But the person said that it once belonged to Kit Carson, but couldn't prove it. Right. But had he or she proven it, then it would have increased the value by another 150 grand just because Kit Carson slept in it for a while. Right. Pretty sweet, huh? Yeah. There's a,

I look at a lot of Craigslist guitars, you know, just I'm not in the market, but I always just look and there's always, every day there's always some two that has a really cheap cruddy guitar and he's like, it was signed by the Kip Winger and there's just this scrawl and Sharpie on it. And, you know, they're asking like 500 bucks for a $100 guitar. I pay for that. With Kip Winger. Winger, yeah. Maybe Don Docken too. What else can you look for, Josh? If you have a CT scan in your house or an x-ray machine or infrared analysis or ultraviolet analysis, you can do it that way. Yes. If you're so lucky to have those kind of things in your house, in your home or your medical clinic or look at the antique dealer. If they're on the up and up, they're probably a member

of one of the professional associations. And then also, if you follow Paul Brown's advice and buy what you like and you're pretty much buying for yourself, then you may end up using your antiques, displaying it, keeping it out in the open in your normal house. And if you do that, you're going to want to keep up with it. Right. Oh, sure. So if you have an antique clock, you're going to want to wind it regularly. If you have a rug or a blanket or something like that, maybe up on the walls, better place than on the floor. Right. And then other kind of more fragile stuff like books, sheet music, manuscripts. You want to store these upright out of the sun. We want to make sure there's no newspaper pressing between them. Highly acidic, bad for an antique

book. Probably not in the basement or the attic. You want a good neutral temperature. Yeah. Your books want to be in the same climate you're in. Yeah. Is it like that? I did. That's a t-shirt right there. Photographs you should store in their own individual envelope and then that envelope in a box. Yeah. Don't like out of the sun. Yeah. Don't stick them all together and like put a brick on top of them because they're going to end up being a gooey mess. It's not a good way to store your photos. And you're also going to want to buy a nice pair of cotton gloves when you start collecting antique photographs of any kind, whether it's glass or metal, daguerreotype. If you're into Matthew Brady or being a mime. I remember the Brady bunch

where it turned out that Matthew Brady was related to Mr. Brady and they showed like a picture. It was a daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln in the background as Mike Brady. Yeah. It was a good one. I do remember that. This is like the second Chris Farley reference. Yeah. We did the Chippendales thing and then like the member when he attacks Scorsese. If you remember. Yeah. You got anything else? Is that it for auctions and antiques and that kind of thing? I think it is. We want to give a hearty thanks to Paul Brown. Congratulations and good luck. It's nice to see another Atlanta boy making good. That's right. Oh yeah. And we're going to drop by gallery 63 one day. Maybe get a picture made with him. How about that? He invited us so it

wouldn't be like stalking. Sure. And you know, check out auction Kings obviously. If you want to learn more about antiques, you can type the word antiques or antiquities is as it's also called. Antiques is slang for antiquities. You know that? Oh, is it? Yeah. You can type it in the search bar at house.stuffworks.com. The dusty old search bar in need of polishing found in our attic. Right. Yes. That's what I'm trying out. How does it work? I think it's great. That brings up then. Listen to me. I'm going to call this polyamory polyamorous young lady. Yeah. Hello from a polyamorous. Yeah. Yeah. Hi guys. Today I was feverishly sewing tiny pieces of silk together and cursing myself for attempting such an elaborate Christmas gift for my sister

when why would anyone want multiple spouses? I started playing. I put down my thimble and listened even more intently than usual for I myself and a polyamorous. I'm a 21 year old female living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which I believe is an America's hat. I've flown over that place. I have two partners, Jesse and Kumaran and of two, three and two years respectively. Jesse and I live together. We all happen to be humanitarian atheists. Jesse and Coom have been friends since well before I met either of them, but they do not have a physical relationship together. Both of them are able to pursue relationships with other people and I have had a lady friend in the last three years to boot as well. To minimize the risk of STIs, we maintain a

fluid bond and no one has intercourse with someone outside the bond without an STI test. Jealousy has never been an issue for some reason. Jesse actually encouraged me to start dating Kum and when Jesse was dating his lady friend, I was really pleased and excited. All of our parents know we are out to our coworkers and friends. I have no desire to get married, but I know of many polyamorous families who do or are. I would say the benefits of polyamory for us at least is a 20-something family with no children boils down to more. More people to love, more people to be loved by, more sources of support, more ideas, more perspective, more Christmas gifts, and most importantly, more people to gun down zombies and left for dead.

Is that one of the safe places, one of the safe areas in the zombie apocalypse? Saskatoon? I'm sure. Three shotguns are better than two. I would also like to point out that living communally where everyone has sexual access to everyone else is relatively rare in polyamory. More commonly, it's just three or four person relationships or quote-unquote open relationships or even primary and secondary relationships. So that and tertiary is from Lydia. Well, thanks a lot, Lydia. It is very nice to have that little peek into your life. Thank you up there. Plus also she left out in Saskatoon. It gets really cold up there. Yeah, real cold. I imagine a three person snuggle is pretty warm. Yeah, it's like Three Dog Night.

Do you know that's where that came from? The Aborigines in Australia on a particularly cold night, they would sleep with three dogs around them. Three Dog Night is a really, really cold night. And that's where the band got their name? Yes. Okay. If you have any cool, interesting stories, we didn't really touch on it, but if you have any cool stories about something that was found in your attic or in your neighbor's attic that turned out to be really valuable and cool, we want to hear about it. And in the meantime, here's a little watching homework for you. Everyone goes through the red violin, probably the coolest auction movie of all time. You seen it? Oh, Chuck, you got it. Send the cue. Okay. Anyway, send us your cool stories, put it in an email, speck it

on the bottom and send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The Howstuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more new episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.