Trash Or Treasure?: An Appraiser Weighs In

More than four dozen people turned out to the Red Creek Park Activity Center in Hampton Bays on Saturday to find out if they were sitting on a potential gold mine or merely holding on to dust collectors.

The results, as told by certified appraiser Eddie Costello, were mixed, but that didn’t seem to dampen the spirits of most of those who turned out for the annual “Trash or Treasure Antiques Show,” hosted by the Town of Southampton Parks and Recreation Department. The popularity of the event, which is similar to the PBS television series “Antiques Roadshow,” is simple, according to Parks and Recreation Superintendent Chris Bean.

“Everybody’s probably got something that’s valuable in their basement,” he said.

Margaret and Jim Steech of Orient hit the jackpot on the items that they brought to be appraised—two hand-carved Chinese statues and a Dutch Masters-type painting. According to Mr. Costello, the pair of Mandarin “emperor” and “empress” statues (which Mr. Steech said he bought for $1,600 at an estate sale up-island) would sell for “at least $5,000 each, probably more” and that the mid-19th century painting (which Ms. Steech said was a family heirloom) would fetch somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,800 after a bit of restoration work.

The Steeches—who reported that they are former Wall Streeters who now work as artists, musicians, songwriters and filmmakers—said that they frequent estate sales, yard sales and the like as they pursue their passions for collecting everything from flags to toys to pin-back buttons and more.

“I could make two films with these statues,” Mr. Steech said of the foot-or-so tall, hollow, signed, hand-carved and painted ivory pieces.

But Ms. Steech said that she wasn’t planning on parting with the painting, which her grandparents, Tonia and Jacob Nussbaum, had managed to travel with out of Poland after surviving the Holocaust.

“The fact that they were able to save this painting is amazing,” she said. “It’s important to keep it.”

Mother and daughter, Lois and Nicole Kowaleski of Hampton Bays brought along an Elvis clock in the shape of a record album—“I don’t know if it’s worth anything but it still works,” Lois said—and two stuffed fox hound dolls dressed in riding gear, which Mr. Costello declared quite rare.

“I’ve never seen anything like these before,” he said. “So I’m going to have to go with the ‘WAG system’ and take a Wild-Ass Guess,” he laughed, estimating that the pair would probably draw an initial bid between $500 and $800 at auction.

There was one piece that truly stumped Mr. Costello; an antique silver box that he estimated would be valued at $1,500. The attendee who brought the piece in, who declined to be identified, reported that his treasure was actually a rare cigarette case, one of only six made, which he said once belonged to Adolf Hitler and had been appraised at $35,000.

Cathy Squires of Hampton Bays brought in a short-legged, hand-carved Victorian chair given to her by a friend.

“It’s a love it or hate it” piece, Mr. Costello said before he valued the furniture at $300.

Ms. Squires said that she was happy with the appraisal and that she would take the chair back to her living room where “nobody sits on it because it’s too short, but I love it.”

Another Hampton Bays resident, Fred Roffe, said he was happily surprised to find out that a hand-stitched sampler that he and his wife, Frances, brought in was worth $2,500. The sampler, hand-sewn by Margaret Slark in 1799 when she was 11 years old, was a “family piece,” Mr. Roffe said. “We’ll keep it framed and in the living room,” he added.

Not everyone got the good news that they were expecting, however.

Westhampton Beach resident Michael Pitcher (formerly an editor of The Press) brought in a painting which he said had quite a lot of sentimental value but that he also suspected might be worth some money. The painting had been purchased by his parents, David and Evelyn Pitcher, early in their courtship. His father, he said, had been a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials and his mother had been a stenographer when they met and fell in love in France.

“It was an odd place for romance,” Mr. Pitcher said. “They purchased the painting in 1945 in Paris.”

Later on, family friend and painter Rory McEwen took a look at the seascape rendering, which is credited to “D. Barthalot” in a tag on the frame, and declared it to be “worth more than all the artwork in this house,” Mr. Pitcher said, adding, “I’m going to keep it in any case. It’s got great personal value and I just wanted to find out if I should insure it.”

But the painting was appraised for only $350 by Mr. Costello, who said that whomever could make out the subject matter in the frame would be “smoking the right stuff.”

Beverly Livernoche of Hampton Bays approached the appraisal of her item—a first-edition book authored by William Henry Drummond and printed in 1912—with a sense of humor.

“It’s 99 years old and in better condition than I am at 71,” she chuckled as she fingered the gold leaf-edged pages of “The Poetical Works of William Henry Drummond.”

But the book was appraised by Mr. Costello for only $20.

“Oh well,” Ms. Livernoche said. “I’m still very happy to know what it’s worth ... And now I don’t have to put it in my will.”