Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi Zaren, Hello Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: How are you today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. How about you? You look like you're
Speaker 2: doing well? Am I right? Is that a good read
Speaker 2: on my part?
Speaker 4: I am?
Speaker 3: Well, you know it's ridiculous, I do tell me all right?
Speaker 2: You know how hockey they allow fighting, yes, which I imagine
Speaker 2: you're probably not a fan of.
Speaker 3: It depends on my mood.
Speaker 2: Oh really, okay, Well, are you familiar with the NHL's
Speaker 2: Washington Capitals. No team, They're a hockey team, and so
Speaker 2: they have minor league teams in hockey, just like in baseball.
Speaker 2: The lowercase, Yes.
Speaker 3: The Washington lowercase. Then see what I did?
Speaker 2: I did. I was trying to let it.
Speaker 3: Go sometimes sometimes I'm so funny and I don't even
Speaker 3: know what to do about that.
Speaker 2: So they're minor league team. Is the Hershey Bears? Yes,
Speaker 2: so you think of it had like a chocolate thing
Speaker 2: with the other anyway, So the Hershey Bears, they were
Speaker 2: having a game. They just had to have the competition.
Speaker 2: They let some people out on the ice, and uh,
Speaker 2: I'll kind of skip ahead to point out that the
Speaker 2: Bears had to afterwards release his statement that said quote,
Speaker 2: this did not reflect the values of the sport or
Speaker 2: the standards we expect when young athletes are on the ice.
Speaker 2: So apparently a bunch of young athletes got into a
Speaker 2: fight on the ice. And when I say young athletes, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: it was an eight and undersquad from Pennsylvania, no squad
Speaker 2: scrimmage between the American Hockey League teams. And so while
Speaker 2: these like eight and unders, the fight lasted for more
Speaker 2: like basically about a minute long. And there's all these
Speaker 2: clips because you know, everybody always records everything. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: the people at the Giant Center, they could be heard cheering.
Speaker 2: Particularly there was like this one the goalie he delivered
Speaker 2: a hard hit to an opponent who was like, you know,
Speaker 2: messing with his The crowds cheering under eight these kids
Speaker 2: are under it. Oh no, the goalie comes out of
Speaker 2: the box and just like levels another crowd or RUPs, right,
Speaker 2: so they uh, And this is why the Bears team
Speaker 2: had to release the statement that quote, this did not
Speaker 2: reflect the values of the sport or the standards we expect.
Speaker 2: I was like, wait, hockey, Yeah, you guys are all
Speaker 2: about the fighting. And then they had to add to
Speaker 2: that little like a qualifier when young athletes are apparently
Speaker 2: if you shave, you can then somebody.
Speaker 3: So yeah, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: So there you go. I thought that was kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 3: That is ridiculous. Do you want to know what else
Speaker 3: is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please? I love ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Keepsake, send curios. This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about
Speaker 3: absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and cons It's always ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn right,
Speaker 3: I know, I am. You know that show Antiques Roadshow?
Speaker 2: Yes, I love that show.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Just to just to clarify before we start chopping
Speaker 3: it up about the show, let me explain what it
Speaker 3: is for non PBS watchers. Okay, So Antiques Road Show
Speaker 3: started as a British reality TV.
Speaker 2: Show Oh really, of course, a.
Speaker 3: BBC jam and in that one, antiques appraisers appraise antiques
Speaker 3: brought in by local people all across the UK. They
Speaker 3: would talk about provenance, history, the value of the items,
Speaker 3: all those things. And it's actually started as a documentary
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy seven, oh wow, and then it became
Speaker 3: this regular show in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: We get more of that I want, I want one a.
Speaker 3: Week and they all right, here you go. So nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine is when that kicked off, and then there
Speaker 3: are like subsequent inner national versions all throughout Europe, North America,
Speaker 3: other countries, same format, So Roadshow was big. The British
Speaker 3: version was big in the US on Public Broadcasting Service PBS, Yes,
Speaker 3: public television stations. So they created their own American version,
Speaker 3: same format, local antiques owners bring in their prize possessions
Speaker 3: to be appraised by experts. The American version first aired
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Seven thanks to viewers like me, thanks Aunt.
Speaker 3: Darlene Shiley, and it has been nominated twenty two times
Speaker 3: for the Primetime Emmys.
Speaker 2: Really twenty two times times. That's crazy.
Speaker 3: And so in the UK version they set up shop
Speaker 3: at some like Grand Manor, and it feels like you
Speaker 3: either get folks with very charming items that their families
Speaker 3: had passed down and also rescued from the blitz, or
Speaker 3: like super blase folks with very expensive art who should
Speaker 3: know better than to go flaunting that stuff on TV. Oh,
Speaker 3: I have some grace, don't be crass.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought, you know they're making themselves marks for.
Speaker 3: Like no, but it's just like you know, darn well
Speaker 3: how much this is worth and what the story is
Speaker 3: in it. You're just bragging on.
Speaker 2: I misread cat. So they're basically like, can I have
Speaker 2: an expert? Just kind of like shine me off on TV?
Speaker 3: Precisely. Then we have the American version. There are great
Speaker 3: segments where people bring in things that actually belong in
Speaker 3: a museum, like they get listed as priceless.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love when I see that.
Speaker 3: A lot of Native American and Inuit pieces are like that,
Speaker 3: or the good ones where people who think they have
Speaker 3: a priceless artifact but they do not. They've been told
Speaker 3: some lie by a family member about how it was
Speaker 3: gifted to their great great grandma from a Chinese princess.
Speaker 3: It was traveling through their town in North Dakota, and
Speaker 3: the appraisers all actually it's circa nineteen eighty six from
Speaker 3: the Bombay company at the local Westfield mall. Love that.
Speaker 3: The best, though, are the ones where the person has
Speaker 3: something that they like and they think it's interesting, but
Speaker 3: they don't really know anything about it. Yeah, so maybe
Speaker 3: they like bought a bought like an item that they
Speaker 3: thought was cool at a garage sale three bucks, like
Speaker 3: a bowl or something, or like a painting caught their
Speaker 3: eye at a thrift store and they paid thirty bucks
Speaker 3: for it, or it was their grandma's and they always
Speaker 3: liked it, and then grandma passes away. They get it
Speaker 3: always reminds them of her sits on the side table
Speaker 3: in the living room. So they're just curious about how
Speaker 3: old the thing is or like any background it might have.
Speaker 2: It's like, tell me the story of this object.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not looking to get rich. But then the
Speaker 3: appraiser just like blows their mind and the thing is
Speaker 3: where hundreds of thousands and they start to cry. Those
Speaker 3: are my favorite.
Speaker 2: I do love that. Those are good.
Speaker 3: So do you watch antiques road show?
Speaker 2: My sister loves all shows where there's like either bargains
Speaker 2: or appraisals or anything like that. So she's like a
Speaker 2: big like shopper and she likes to, like, you know,
Speaker 2: she actually does really well. She finds things at places
Speaker 2: like you know, antiques, like antique houses, is Good Wills wherever,
Speaker 2: and she'll like be like, oh, this is because she
Speaker 2: watches these shows. She knows a ton of different things
Speaker 2: that are valuable. So shout out to my sister. I've
Speaker 2: always impressed, like how much she knows about these things.
Speaker 2: I dislike watching the human reactions, and then I like
Speaker 2: watching the experts kind of glaze people off, like going,
Speaker 2: oh man, this is really cool. It's actually beginning, they
Speaker 2: tell him, like the school of artists who made it,
Speaker 2: and then I learned something or else. I also like
Speaker 2: it when it's like like some personal like shame where
Speaker 2: it's like this is actually a slave made bracelet, so
Speaker 2: your family was likely. Yeah, those are brutal. So I'm
Speaker 2: a little dark.
Speaker 3: And my the show when I was younger, we'd watch it.
Speaker 3: My brother would start scanning around the house. Could I
Speaker 3: take it? And we're just like, there's nothing of value here, trap,
Speaker 3: there's absolutely nothing. You actually you caught me watching an
Speaker 3: episode here at headquarters while I was eating my lunch
Speaker 3: the other.
Speaker 2: Yes, totally. When you slam shut your laptop like you,
Speaker 2: I was waiting.
Speaker 3: For the interns to finish changing my oil and I
Speaker 3: was it was just killing time. Yeah, because they did.
Speaker 3: There's an air filter change so on it. Because we
Speaker 3: Americans can't seem to do anything without grift and fraud.
Speaker 3: There's a reason. There's a reason I'm talking about the
Speaker 3: American version of Antiques Roadshow today. There's crime. That's why
Speaker 3: we're here. So I've got three American Antiques road Show
Speaker 3: adjacent crimes for you today. Let's start with a couple
Speaker 3: of Civil War appraisers, Russell Pritchard the third and George Juno.
Speaker 3: So Pritchard, he's like, he's this third generation antiques dealer
Speaker 3: from New Jersey, and he presents himself as an expert
Speaker 3: in Americana, ethnographic objects, especially Native American artifacts, and his
Speaker 3: family business background and he has like this polished demeanor.
Speaker 3: They they helped him cultivate incredible credibility in the antiques trade.
Speaker 2: It's a great place, so I imagine to establish that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his dad, Russell Pritchard Junior, was the former director
Speaker 3: of the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia. Huh,
Speaker 3: So he's got it's just in the family. So he
Speaker 3: positions himself not only as doing you know, the Americana
Speaker 3: and such, he becomes a military as specialist and appraiser.
Speaker 3: By like the mid nineties, he was the co owner
Speaker 3: of the American Ordnance Preservation Association AOPA.
Speaker 2: Like the Canniball Finders.
Speaker 3: I guess they're like Save the Cannibals, which was in
Speaker 3: the quote business of dealing in and appraising eighteenth and
Speaker 3: nineteenth century military items and also serving quote as a
Speaker 3: consultant to various museums and libraries.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you got spent call him right.
Speaker 3: You're like, what's this? Gunde? Like, no, put it down.
Speaker 3: So George Juneo he was an associate of Pritchard, and
Speaker 3: he was not a recognized antiques authority, but instead he
Speaker 3: just kind of worked with Pritchard in like acquiring and
Speaker 3: reselling objects.
Speaker 2: So he didn't know like a claymore from a clay
Speaker 2: achm precisely.
Speaker 3: So Pritchard's the expert, Juno's just like the facilitator got you.
Speaker 3: In the late nineties early two thousand's, Antiques road Show
Speaker 3: had established itself as this widely trusted public television program
Speaker 3: and they would do these appraisal events all over the US.
Speaker 3: Appraisers and guests were expected to disclose any conflicts of interest,
Speaker 3: and the items that they brought for appraisal were assumed
Speaker 3: to be owned by the person presenting them. Yes, that's
Speaker 3: just part of the country. So Pritchard and Juno they
Speaker 3: would purchase valuable antiques privately at relatively low prices, and
Speaker 3: then they would present those same items on antiques road
Speaker 3: show like they belonged to some clueless owner who had
Speaker 3: recently discovered they.
Speaker 2: Would have a shilling, and then they appraise.
Speaker 3: So that the televised appraisal, well, it would totally spike
Speaker 3: the object's perceived value and marketability. So to pull this off,
Speaker 3: friends of Theirs appeared on camera as the quote owner,
Speaker 3: and then Pritchard used his insider knowledge of the market
Speaker 3: to select things that would be likely to receive high appraisals.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing. The show wasn't told that the items
Speaker 3: had already been purchased for resale and that the presenters
Speaker 3: had this financial interest in the outcome of the appraisal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course not so.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety six, Juno and Pritchard had this guy
Speaker 3: named Steve come on and he brought a Civil War sword. Now,
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, they told Steve what to say about
Speaker 3: the sword, rehearsing it. Oh, they had to have he
Speaker 3: was he was supposed to come out and tell them
Speaker 3: that he used to cut watermelons with the sword when
Speaker 3: he was a boy. And they're like, okay, you wild's
Speaker 3: so so good and like all everyone can picture it,
Speaker 3: and it's just so wholesome with a sword and like
Speaker 3: you know, back when I was knee high to aggress.
Speaker 2: How you want more watermelon?
Speaker 3: Mo my arm? So Steve tells the story and everyone, oh,
Speaker 3: they'll chuckle, but then they gasp when Prigard and Juno
Speaker 3: revealed that the sword is actually worth a cool thirty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars. Steve, he's gobsmacked.
Speaker 2: I bet acting.
Speaker 3: So they didn't get any money out of this scam,
Speaker 3: but it was used to lay the groundwork. So this
Speaker 3: would get them more airtime on Antique's road show so
Speaker 3: they could promote their business, American Ordnance Preservation Association.
Speaker 2: They were just water yeah at this.
Speaker 3: Point, Yeah, lay in the ground, where chum the waters.
Speaker 3: So another incident involved a Navajo chief's blanket, which is
Speaker 3: a highly prized category in terms of nineteenth century Native
Speaker 3: American text.
Speaker 2: Sure those patterns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Pritchard and Juno, Oh yeah, they bought the
Speaker 3: blanket from its original owner for like five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: They didn't tell the seller that they were going to
Speaker 3: use it for a televised appraisal, and so the blanket
Speaker 3: is later presented on Antique's Roadshow as a newly discovered
Speaker 3: family heirloom, like, look who we found in this chest?
Speaker 3: Is what is this thing? So during the broadcast, Pritchard
Speaker 3: is like, you know what, I would value it at
Speaker 3: approximately three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. What he's like,
Speaker 3: it is so rare, it's in perfect condition.
Speaker 2: Purchase for five grand.
Speaker 3: So the episode airs and it dramatically inflates the blanket's
Speaker 3: perceived market value viewers. They have no idea that a
Speaker 3: the presenters already own the item and that b this
Speaker 3: appraisal is like directly benefiting them. So after the broadcast,
Speaker 3: the blanket gets resold for this huge, huge profit, and
Speaker 3: then it's directly tied to the credibility and the exposure
Speaker 3: provided by the show. Of course, so they didn't do
Speaker 3: this with just the blanket.
Speaker 2: A bunch of like that.
Speaker 3: Investigators later identified multiple items that followed the same trajectory
Speaker 3: private purchase, deceptive on air presentation, profitable resale. So Juno
Speaker 3: and Pritchard they did attract new customers with that watermelon
Speaker 3: sword segment, and then they conned them all over again.
Speaker 3: They convinced the descendants of Major Samuel Wilson, who was
Speaker 3: a Civil War Army a Union Army officer, to sell
Speaker 3: one of his swords. And they told the family that
Speaker 3: they were acting on behalf of the Harrisburg National Civil
Speaker 3: War Museum. Oh and the sword's worth eight grand and
Speaker 3: would they accept this offer? So Juno and Pritchard, you know,
Speaker 3: They're like, the sword will be on display at the
Speaker 3: museum so that everyone can learn about your ani as
Speaker 3: the Wilson family. They're like so honored. They're like, yes,
Speaker 3: we agree to the deal. So they pay the eight
Speaker 3: thousand for the sword. Then they turn around and they
Speaker 3: sell it to a private collector for twenty grand. Nothing
Speaker 3: to do with the museum. And there was an even
Speaker 3: bigger scam run on the descendants of George E. Pickett.
Speaker 3: He charged huh major general and the Confederate side.
Speaker 2: During the Civil War Gettysburg.
Speaker 3: He was one of the commanders at Pickett's charged, thus
Speaker 3: the name a quote futile and bloody Confederate offensive. On
Speaker 3: the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Speaker 2: Oh I watch ken Burns.
Speaker 3: Yeah you do. So Juno and Pritchard, they set their
Speaker 3: sights on George E. Pickett the fifth. Okay, so Picket
Speaker 3: the fifth had a sword and other items that the
Speaker 3: og George Pickett had, and then Juno and Pritchard they're like,
Speaker 3: they look at all this stuff and they're like, this
Speaker 3: is worth about eighty eight thousand dollars, and pick At
Speaker 3: the Fifth's.
Speaker 2: Like dang, okay, yeah, I bet he was.
Speaker 3: So they buy it and then they turned around and
Speaker 3: they sold it all for eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh he dropped a dicil point so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, put loopsy. So Piket sued them in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: He got an eight hundred thousand dollars settlement from a jury. Good,
Speaker 3: but their time in court was just beginning. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Back Meanwhile, over at Antiques road Show, the suspicions are
Speaker 3: rising because producers and outside experts are starting to notice
Speaker 3: these inconsistencies, So items appearing on the show later get
Speaker 3: traced to dealers rather than private owners. Similar objects resurfaced
Speaker 3: on the antiques market just after broadcast, and they're marketed
Speaker 3: with references to their road show appearance.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was figuring out on TV.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's my favorite. The same individuals appeared repeatedly with
Speaker 3: unusually significant objects.
Speaker 2: They used the same show.
Speaker 3: The biggest screw up.
Speaker 2: They couldn't even come up.
Speaker 3: With characters and costumes, do some wig stuff, like I
Speaker 3: know these dudes are into wing stuff, make up fun
Speaker 3: names and backstories. I mean, look, they did it with
Speaker 3: the watermelon. That's the best part of crime, the.
Speaker 2: Character.
Speaker 3: Yes, So PBS and the show's producers they begin an
Speaker 3: internal review, and once the concerns were like solidified, they
Speaker 3: turned everything over to the FEDS. Oh, and they're like,
Speaker 3: you know, we're not going to handle this internally. You
Speaker 3: do it. So the US Attorney's Office investigated, uh, these
Speaker 3: two for wire fraud because it was involved in interstate
Speaker 3: television broadcasting communications. Oh wow, so Juno and Prechers they
Speaker 3: catch these federal charges, fake appraisals, wire fraud, federal mail.
Speaker 3: All of this was beyond what they'd done on TV.
Speaker 2: Like it.
Speaker 3: It went so much further than that. So Juno cut
Speaker 3: a deal for a reduced sentence. He testified against Pritchers.
Speaker 2: I was just about to say, I know, they flipped
Speaker 2: on each other.
Speaker 3: And he got a six month sentence in a work
Speaker 3: release program. Six months, and then he had to pay
Speaker 3: thirty thousand dollars as a fine. Pritchard, different story. He
Speaker 3: got sentenced to one year for the military antiques fraud.
Speaker 3: He had to pay that eight eight hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in restitution. PBS responded publicly, and they were
Speaker 3: very decisive. They pulled those episodes that the guys were on.
Speaker 3: They tightened disclosure and conflict of interest rules, particularly around
Speaker 3: the dealers and their intermediaries. They also started to really
Speaker 3: emphasize that they don't authenticate ownership and they're relying on
Speaker 3: honest disclosure from participants, and so that trust had been violated,
Speaker 3: but they want to remain trusting of the people participating.
Speaker 2: And I don't know how you would have everybody when
Speaker 2: you have him just showing up it basically an expo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So Pritchard, he did his time, but
Speaker 3: he didn't learn his lesson. He got pinched in Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: on theft charges and he did time in the state prison.
Speaker 3: That was in two thousand and eight. In two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine, he copped a guilty plead of more theft
Speaker 3: charges as well as deceptive business practices, and for that
Speaker 3: he got another four to eight in state prison. Okay,
Speaker 3: let's take a break.
Speaker 2: They're not giving him enough time for him to learn
Speaker 2: his lesson. He needs a longer time out.
Speaker 3: Let's take our own time out and we come back
Speaker 3: more antique antics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Zara's Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Five six eight? Are you going to do your dance routine?
Speaker 3: I already can't see it though.
Speaker 2: Share dancing over here so good. So I had you
Speaker 2: count down. I was like, I want you to come in.
Speaker 3: I just realized no one can see us.
Speaker 2: When I did the dip. Yours as to come in,
Speaker 2: just down on the ground.
Speaker 3: So we had that gruesome twosome of Russell Pritchard the
Speaker 3: Third and George Juneau. Now let's take a look, rather
Speaker 3: a double take at some identical twins.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, Yes.
Speaker 3: Lee and Leslie Keino, Lee and Leslie Blonde, twin antiquarians, authors,
Speaker 3: TV personalities, and almost fronsters.
Speaker 2: I was about to ask if they were both like sisters,
Speaker 2: and you said they're identical. And I've made this mistake before.
Speaker 2: If they're identical, then they're both going to be the same.
Speaker 2: They're not going to be fraternal. Where they just shared
Speaker 2: the uterus.
Speaker 3: You said something like that, Yeah, time, what happened.
Speaker 2: But I was like, you're like, how that works there?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, so Lee and Leslie's two dudes, and
Speaker 3: you would if you see a picture of them, you'll
Speaker 3: recognize them from if you've ever seen Anos road show,
Speaker 3: because they're about it. So they describe their collecting impulse
Speaker 3: as starting with like basic scavenging. Okay, so well, no,
Speaker 3: you'll find out so okay, they had the National Endowment
Speaker 3: for the Humanities did this whole profile about them because
Speaker 3: they got the National Humanities metal well at one point.
Speaker 3: So they talked about how they grew up in upstate
Speaker 3: New York and they rode this Suzuki trail bike around
Speaker 3: to explore ruined barns and houses. So they start out
Speaker 3: collecting utilitarian architectural iron work from the late eighteenth century
Speaker 3: early nineteenth century, like stuff like wrot iron door handles.
Speaker 2: Gotcha hinges and like fire pokers and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that early phase quickly became what they
Speaker 3: called training in the way that you know antiques people
Speaker 3: mean it. So they find an object, they chase down
Speaker 3: the maker, the date, the method. In that same National
Speaker 3: Endowment for the Humanities account, Leslie talks about how they
Speaker 3: would research what they found look all this stuff up,
Speaker 3: trying to understand exactly how things were made and get
Speaker 3: down to the mechanics of like a potter's leave. When
Speaker 3: they moved into stoneware collecting, so by the time they
Speaker 3: were in college, they were already operating like working dealers.
Speaker 3: They're real party animals. So there was this Hamilton College
Speaker 3: news feature that came out in two thousand that talks
Speaker 3: about them. The brothers. They sold most of their croc
Speaker 3: collection to help pay for college.
Speaker 2: Like crockwear cooking, like country croc. I imagine they have
Speaker 2: a crazy sweater game, these twos.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you had no idea and the three
Speaker 3: piece suits.
Speaker 2: Get out of town.
Speaker 3: These are wild boys. Right, Let's sell our crocs and
Speaker 3: then go to college. So Leslie went to Williams College
Speaker 3: in Massachusetts. Lee went to Hamilton College in New York.
Speaker 3: So while they're in school, each of them cataloged their
Speaker 3: colleges antique furniture collection and they just so this was
Speaker 3: like the way that they educated themselves. Very practical object
Speaker 3: by objects, and that's super close to how specialists get
Speaker 3: trained in the trade. But they're doing it for themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not apprenticing under somebody, right.
Speaker 3: So Lee he served as a graduate fellow at Historic
Speaker 3: Deerfield and then was a visiting scholar at this museum,
Speaker 3: and every place that he went was a key point
Speaker 3: for American decorative arts. So it put him inside all
Speaker 3: these collections, the connoisseurship of it all that kind of
Speaker 3: feed the auction world. Leslie, he got out of Williams
Speaker 3: College with honors and American arts. So they have this
Speaker 3: educational pedigree, but they also go and they work in
Speaker 3: these places and gather real world experience. So they went
Speaker 3: from college into auction housework, and they both specialize in
Speaker 3: American furniture. There's this New York Magazine profile that talks
Speaker 3: about how after they graduated, the twins moved in together
Speaker 3: in Manhattan and they took jobs at competing auction houses.
Speaker 3: So Leslie got a gig at Sotheby's. Lee wound up at.
Speaker 2: Chris Oh like the the aug auction.
Speaker 3: Houses, and so while they were working at these rival houses,
Speaker 3: they sometimes found themselves going after the same stuff, and
Speaker 3: so they had to avoid talking shop in order to
Speaker 3: prevent conflicts.
Speaker 2: Totally feels like the script of an eighties movie.
Speaker 3: So Leslie and this happened in the eighties there and
Speaker 3: so right there, Leslie, he hooked up at Sotheby's in
Speaker 3: their American Furniture and Decorative Arts department as a cataloger.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty he becomes the director of the department
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: That's not bad, not bad at all.
Speaker 3: And then you know he spent twenty six years overseeing
Speaker 3: like the headline Americana sales at Setheby's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the big like, oh, this is on our catalog.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so Lee he worked as director of the
Speaker 3: American Furniture department at Doyle Galleries and then went over
Speaker 3: to Christie's for their American Furniture department. And then they
Speaker 3: have like Lee started Lee Keino American Antiques Auction. So
Speaker 3: you know, they have like they are public facing authorities,
Speaker 3: and they start making appearances on Antiques Road Show, and
Speaker 3: the show's executive producer, Marsha Bemco told The New York
Speaker 3: Times quote, our audience fell in love with them and
Speaker 3: made them stars.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the charming as they say they are,
Speaker 2: they have like not to borrow the word too greedily,
Speaker 2: but they have the provenance of what you would want
Speaker 2: for the type of expert twins, I mean, just like
Speaker 2: a great story, and.
Speaker 3: So they're like the most influential figures in the American
Speaker 3: antiques market at this point, and their opinions carry serious
Speaker 3: weight and they can affect market value. So twenty sixteen, though,
Speaker 3: things went a little sideways. New Orleans Auction Galleries had
Speaker 3: an auction in April of that year, and the Keynots
Speaker 3: did something unusual. They each apparently wanted the same Turkish
Speaker 3: Angora carpet. Okay, so one of one of the twins
Speaker 3: was bidding online and the other was on the phone,
Speaker 3: and there were a few opening bids, but then the
Speaker 3: brothers just like racked it up, back and forth, back
Speaker 3: and forth. In all, they bid against each other about
Speaker 3: fifty times, and everyone else dropped out. They kept going.
Speaker 2: He was climbing higher and hire like two fighter pilots.
Speaker 3: Well and the rug so the rocklig had a low
Speaker 3: estimate of eight hundred dollars, Leslie snagged the winning bid
Speaker 3: at fourteen five hundred. Well, they bid it up.
Speaker 2: That's like me and a fantasy football auction, just just
Speaker 2: going higher and higher for the wrong player. I want
Speaker 2: Joe Burrow.
Speaker 3: Damnit, here's the thing. He did not pay for it.
Speaker 2: Why did he get according to that.
Speaker 3: According to the auction house, this wasn't the first time
Speaker 3: they'd done this. So Lee he bid two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty for an Italian painting that was supposed to go
Speaker 3: for four hundred bucks. He also landed an antique bed
Speaker 3: for sixteen hundred that had only been valued at around
Speaker 3: three hundred and On both of these auctions, the brother
Speaker 3: was the only other bidder.
Speaker 2: Is this gonna be like a reveal where you tell
Speaker 2: me there's actually not twin brothers. Is one guy who's
Speaker 2: been pretending to the whole time working two jobs?
Speaker 3: I wish, but no, Okay, I don't have that reveal.
Speaker 3: So they're so they're they're bidding these up, but they're
Speaker 3: not paying for it. Yeah, so I was paying time
Speaker 3: for the auction house to lawyer up. They filed the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Wait when they don't pay, they just like they walk
Speaker 2: out of the auction like, well.
Speaker 3: They're not even there. They're online, they're like log off.
Speaker 2: So it's like me at like a county auction where
Speaker 2: they have cars for saying, when I make a bid
Speaker 2: and I walk out of my grandfather who brought me there. Look,
Speaker 2: look I don't have the money, and he's like, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about? We got to go get it
Speaker 2: in the car.
Speaker 3: Sounds like it's from experience.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: So the auction house they filed the lawsuit. They accused
Speaker 3: the Twins of quote auction misconduct which resulted in unjustifiably
Speaker 3: higher purchase prices of auction items. So back at the
Speaker 3: auction with the rug, the brothers bought two hundred and
Speaker 3: forty four items in total, and they ran up a
Speaker 3: bill for four.
Speaker 2: Hundred thousands, say like half mil easy.
Speaker 3: Didn't pay the bill and quote. We have never had
Speaker 3: an unpaid invoice of this size, said Ashton Thomas, president
Speaker 3: of the New Orleans auction House.
Speaker 2: And these are like the faces of places. I mean,
Speaker 2: these are the guys experts. Yes.
Speaker 3: So there was this other auction house, Camelot Auctions in
Speaker 3: Philadelphia where they bought eighty nine items. Bill was two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand, and they skipped on that one too.
Speaker 2: Are they compulsive bidding?
Speaker 3: They get confronted and Leslie tells the New Orleans auction
Speaker 3: House that that dual bidding was a mix up, just
Speaker 3: like a silly misunderstanding.
Speaker 2: I don't know, how the mass works on Like He's.
Speaker 3: Like, we got excited and then we just got Yeah.
Speaker 3: In an email to the auction house, this is what
Speaker 3: Leslie said, quote. This was a situation where my brother
Speaker 3: thought I was bidding on the lot and I thought
Speaker 3: he was bidding on it. We made a mistake, and
Speaker 3: I would hope that, given the amount of property we purchased,
Speaker 3: you would forgive us for this mistake. And then, according
Speaker 3: to the New York Times, quote, the auction house recorded
Speaker 3: Leslie during the sale saying that he and his brother
Speaker 3: were buying auction items quote together, according to its court papers.
Speaker 3: So when The New York Times approached the twins for comment,
Speaker 3: they were like, you, we're too busy for an interview.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, But they're like, we'll send you an email. Quote.
Speaker 3: They did not directly address why they had been willing
Speaker 3: to pay escalated prices on some items, except to say,
Speaker 3: as specialists in our business, we seek hidden treasures, and
Speaker 3: as researchers, we search for unique provenas of every object. Wow,
Speaker 3: what does that even? So why didn't they pay? I'm
Speaker 3: so well, First things first, they didn't have the money.
Speaker 3: So for most of us, that stops us trying to
Speaker 3: buy things. Yes, you did, their lawyers said, quote it
Speaker 3: was a temporary issue of liquidity, unprecedented for them, but
Speaker 3: hardly unheard of in the auction business. So like translation,
Speaker 3: all these folks are sketchy, yes, right, but that's something
Speaker 3: we've talked about before. How like the art world and
Speaker 3: art auctions are such a cover for money laundering and
Speaker 3: shady business. That's not what I'm saying happened here.
Speaker 2: No, it's not at all.
Speaker 3: I'm just making an observation. So eventually the twins paid
Speaker 3: part of the New Orleans tab. They paid seventy grand
Speaker 3: on it, and then they settled with the place in Philly.
Speaker 3: And then after a while they made the New Orleans
Speaker 3: outfit hole. So everyone was taken care of, sure, And
Speaker 3: they also told the New Orleans folks that they were
Speaker 3: going to sell quote literally a national treasure end quote
Speaker 3: of their own.
Speaker 2: Why did they sound so much like influencers too?
Speaker 3: I have no idea what it was, but I pray
Speaker 3: it had something to do with Nicholas Cage. Were they
Speaker 3: going to sell Nicholas Cage? Perhaps, unlike the other guys,
Speaker 3: the keynot Twins, they didn't lose their spot on road show.
Speaker 2: Road shows, you know how they say.
Speaker 3: Turn about is fair play, or in the words of
Speaker 3: Michael Scott, oh how the turntables turn? Well, that we've
Speaker 3: got that here. So less than a decade later, Lee
Speaker 3: Keino got a taste of his own medicine. He got
Speaker 3: scammed at his auction house for north of one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. He said, the buyer seemed legit. She won
Speaker 3: bids that totaled five thousand to ten thousand dollars worth
Speaker 3: of items at a time, and she paid her bills.
Speaker 3: So the buyer was this woman, Grace Lou. She then
Speaker 3: upped her game. She went after a huge lot of
Speaker 3: Asian furniture and decorative items. There was like a bronze
Speaker 3: libation cup that had the handle looked like a beast
Speaker 3: libeans a watercolor painting of a cat. And then this
Speaker 3: carved dragon like a display cabinet with dragons all over.
Speaker 3: So it kind of reminds me of when my friend,
Speaker 3: the author Kim Wong Keltner, she went on a buying spree,
Speaker 3: grabbing up all the Kingfisher pins and such that she
Speaker 3: could find in order to keep them out of the
Speaker 3: hands of white ladies. Well, like the pins were pieces
Speaker 3: that were broken off of these enormous ornate headdresses for
Speaker 3: sale to the West, and so they yeah, the feathers.
Speaker 3: So there's these like really beautiful luminous sometimes irridescent blue feathers. Sure,
Speaker 3: and they are inlaid into silver. And Kim took this personally.
Speaker 3: And I used to love going with her to Anne's
Speaker 3: tique shops and like little stores in Chinatown as she
Speaker 3: sought out new pieces. It was like the most righteous
Speaker 3: shopping spree.
Speaker 2: Amazing cool.
Speaker 3: So anyway, and she would tell the owner, I need
Speaker 3: to make sure white ladies don't buy this. As I'm
Speaker 3: standing there, I'm like, yeah, we don't, let.
Speaker 2: Us, we must stop.
Speaker 3: We up anyway, Chracelu. So she bought one hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy eight four hundred and fifty dollars worth of stuff.
Speaker 3: Keno let her walk off with it with the promise
Speaker 3: to pay late. I I was wondering, And then he
Speaker 3: later told the New York Post quote, I kicked myself
Speaker 3: that I allowed it to happen. I've been in the
Speaker 3: business my entire life. This is the first time that
Speaker 3: this has happened. Is it the Is it so A
Speaker 3: lawsuit filed by the auction house against Lou in Manhattan
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one says that Lou took about forty
Speaker 3: pieces in July of twenty twenty, paid forty five grand,
Speaker 3: but then refused to hand over the balance of one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty three thousand dollars. Ok. She said she
Speaker 3: tried to resell some of the items and was told
Speaker 3: that they were like later copies, because.
Speaker 2: Like, I'll pay a little less than twenty five percent
Speaker 2: on this, how about that.
Speaker 3: She's like, all right, let me get let me raise
Speaker 3: some money some of the stuff I paid for. I'm
Speaker 3: going to turn around and sell it. And people are like, no,
Speaker 3: that's a reproduction. Yeah. And so then Keino's like, hold.
Speaker 2: Up now, ma'am, I don't know what to believe now. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then he's like, these were not represented as antiques
Speaker 3: from a particular period. This was just something that she assumed,
Speaker 3: is what I suppose he's saying.
Speaker 2: So everyone's game and everything.
Speaker 3: Everybody, and he's like, you know, she had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to examine every single piece multiple times over a period
Speaker 3: of weeks before she bought it. She wasn't done with
Speaker 3: Keno she'd and another of his auctions in January of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two came back under a different name.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, and in.
Speaker 3: This case she plucked up half the sale. So auction
Speaker 3: house staff realized it was her and they told her like,
Speaker 3: all right, you know what, you have to pay your
Speaker 3: entire bill right now.
Speaker 2: On the spot.
Speaker 3: And they never heard from her again. Yeah, maybe she
Speaker 3: just got excited. Lee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know how it goes, Lee.
Speaker 3: So Keno. He went to The New York Post to
Speaker 3: tell his story, he said, because she was like hitting
Speaker 3: multiple auction houses in the area and he wanted everyone
Speaker 3: on high alert.
Speaker 2: Of course, that's what. Yeah, this was public information.
Speaker 3: According to the Post quote, since twenty twenty, she has
Speaker 3: been on more than two hundred and thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: worth of treasures sold by various auction houses through the
Speaker 3: Live Auctioneer's website and ever completed the transactions. Among those
Speaker 3: she allegedly stiffed was David Killen, who runs an eponymous
Speaker 3: auction house in Chelsea. He told the Post that Lou
Speaker 3: was the winning bidder on about thirteen thousand dollars in
Speaker 3: Asian objects a month ago and refused to pay for
Speaker 3: the goods or pick them up. Winning an item at
Speaker 3: auction is considered a legal agreement to buy it, he said.
Speaker 3: Killen said they would lose value if placed up for
Speaker 3: auction again. Can we go back again to the Keno
Speaker 3: brothers please, I mean, hello, it's a legal agreement to
Speaker 3: buy it anyway. He goes on quote. People think, oh,
Speaker 3: there must be something wrong with it because the person
Speaker 3: who bought it never paid for it. He said, it
Speaker 3: gets what we call in the business a bad smell
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 2: Oh, in the biz.
Speaker 3: They call it a bad smell. So there's no right.
Speaker 3: There's no word on whether anyone got lu to pay
Speaker 3: for all of her one bids or whatever happened with
Speaker 3: the lawsuit. But I think the twins and then plus
Speaker 3: their older brother now does this too. I think they're
Speaker 3: all still rocking the road show. Let's stop for some
Speaker 3: ads from the good people at whatever product or services
Speaker 3: has bought time from. iHeart we thank them, and when
Speaker 3: we come back, Antiques Roadshow works for truth and justice,
Speaker 3: zaren Yes, all right, so we've had people who used
Speaker 3: the venerated Antiques Roadshow to enrich their coffers, up their
Speaker 3: status for negative gain. But what about when Antiques Road
Speaker 3: Show helps.
Speaker 2: Out splitting watermelon?
Speaker 3: What about when they let their goodness shine through?
Speaker 2: Oh the show Antique Roadshow.
Speaker 3: Saren, Have I got a story for you?
Speaker 2: Yes? I love stories.
Speaker 3: Do you know what a Digerett type is?
Speaker 2: Yeah? The first photographs, right, So.
Speaker 3: It's a tie of portrait photo developed in eighteen thirty
Speaker 3: nine by the French chemist Louis de guerre Ye.
Speaker 2: So creating the image, that's true.
Speaker 3: Creating the image involves chemically preparing a polished silver plate,
Speaker 3: and that makes it a photo. Yeah, makes it a
Speaker 3: photo sensitive surface. The surface is exposed to light and
Speaker 3: the subject and then developed with mercury vapor fixed with
Speaker 3: the solution of hyposulfate of soda.
Speaker 2: Nice. You can go mad as a hatter while you're
Speaker 2: making a.
Speaker 3: Photo, that's right. It makes those like moody evocative pictures
Speaker 3: that are incredibly fragile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also a little uneven because of the use
Speaker 2: of the chemicals. You get those little dots on the
Speaker 2: edges right.
Speaker 3: Right, You have to keep them in like velvet lined cases.
Speaker 2: You can't touch them.
Speaker 3: Now, you can't touch them because they will smear the image.
Speaker 3: Despite all that, they were an improvement over like the
Speaker 3: earlier attempts at photos, and for a decade or so
Speaker 3: it was the yeah, people love them. But then a
Speaker 3: new process came along, a simpler, cheaper, more resilient photograph,
Speaker 3: and just like that, de gerotypes were a thing of
Speaker 3: the past with the oh yes. But that made them collectible.
Speaker 3: To this day there they are in demand for like history,
Speaker 3: photography and antique buffs. So they get de gerotypes on
Speaker 3: Antique's road Show every now and then, and the guy
Speaker 3: to get as you're appraiser for those is a fellow
Speaker 3: named Wes Cowen. So Cowen. He's an anthropologist, he's an auctioneer,
Speaker 3: he's an appraiser, and he knows deagerotypes. Nice Sally Guest.
Speaker 3: She lucked out when she went on Antiques Roach Guest
Speaker 3: as a guest. Sally the guest. She's something of a
Speaker 3: de gharatype expert, or at least like a collector. She
Speaker 3: knows how to research them. She has a huge collection,
Speaker 3: almost four hundred and fifty of them, and she's always
Speaker 3: on the hunt for interesting ones. And she stumbled upon
Speaker 3: one in particular and was really intrigued, so she bought it,
Speaker 3: did a little research, had like a vague sense of
Speaker 3: the subject of the portrait and the age, and that's
Speaker 3: about it. So off she went to road show to
Speaker 3: get some answers and show off her cool. Fine Saron,
Speaker 3: close your eyes, eyes closed, I want you to picture it.
Speaker 3: It's July of two thousand and four, Omaha, Nebraska. You've
Speaker 3: brought with you to this crowded convention center a Neon
Speaker 3: moosehead beer sign that you've found behind a dumpster about
Speaker 3: twenty years ago. It still works. It hangs in your garage,
Speaker 3: but you rarely plug it in and light it up.
Speaker 3: You don't want to use up all the juice. You're
Speaker 3: standing in line to get it appraised by the Americana
Speaker 3: and advertising specialist. People all around you chat and laugh
Speaker 3: as they wait to see if what they've brought today
Speaker 3: is some sort of lost treasure. In the meantime, you
Speaker 3: watch as folks with fancy stuff get set up at
Speaker 3: special table in the middle of the room and get
Speaker 3: filmed for the actual show. You wonder if that will
Speaker 3: happen to you. You just never know. You look over
Speaker 3: and you see that blonde appraiser guy Lee Keino, giving
Speaker 3: a man all the details about the Chippendale desk he
Speaker 3: brought with him. It looks fancy. You can't quite hear
Speaker 3: what they're saying, but it's cool to watch them under
Speaker 3: the stage lights. You move up a little in the line.
Speaker 3: There's a guy with some old baseball memorabilia being interviewed
Speaker 3: by the appraiser. He seems excited when the final value
Speaker 3: is revealed. Man, this thrill is infectious. It's not even
Speaker 3: your stuff, but you are beaming for the man. You
Speaker 3: move up a little more in the line. You're usually
Speaker 3: pretty impatient standing in line, but this is just too interesting.
Speaker 3: There's no way anyone could get bored here. You do
Speaker 3: feel a little bad for some of the people who
Speaker 3: are carrying around what is most certainly junk, but maybe
Speaker 3: they're like you, they're just enjoying being here. What if
Speaker 3: the neon sign, though, is worth a couple thousand, you think,
Speaker 3: man alive, that would be amazing the hall, someone drops
Speaker 3: his ceramic vase. It shatters on the floor. In the
Speaker 3: crowd gasps. That's a shame. One of the dangers of
Speaker 3: bringing these treasures out of the house, especially with nervous,
Speaker 3: sweaty hands. The line you're in snakes around, and you
Speaker 3: find yourself right next to an on camera appraisal. You
Speaker 3: stand just outside of the camera shot, but you're close
Speaker 3: enough this time to hear everything. A kind faced woman
Speaker 3: in an embroidered T shirt and a short salt and
Speaker 3: pepperish haircut sits across the table from a man in
Speaker 3: a pale gray suit. You recognize him as Wes Cowan.
Speaker 3: He's always got cool civil war appraisals and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: The man knows history and you respect that. In between them,
Speaker 3: on a tiny lacquered wooden stand sits one of those
Speaker 3: old tiny photographs, the ones in grayscale civil war looking things.
Speaker 3: The guy in the picture looks kind of familiar. The
Speaker 3: lady said she was browsing in a quote antique slash
Speaker 3: junk shop in Walnut, Illinois, when this dagaratype caught her eye.
Speaker 3: De Garati that's the name of those things, She says.
Speaker 3: There was a stack of pictures in the shop, but
Speaker 3: this was the most interesting one. She collects them, see,
Speaker 3: and this one looks sort of special, and she thought
Speaker 3: she recognized the guy. Edgar Allan Poe, Poe, that's the guy.
Speaker 3: She tells Collen that she paid ninety six dollars including
Speaker 3: tax for the photo. That's a pretty penny, you think.
Speaker 3: But she's a collector, so she must know what it's worth.
Speaker 3: You doubt she'd get scammed. She tells Collen that she's
Speaker 3: proud of it and has it on her mantelpiece at home,
Speaker 3: even though, as she puts it, Poe Quote is not
Speaker 3: the best looking man. Cowen confirms everything she says. Tells
Speaker 3: her it's a Dagarrett type of Poe and that's pretty rare.
Speaker 3: He says, only six photographs of the guy were known
Speaker 3: to exist. He tells her there's a little damage to
Speaker 3: the face area, probably from someone wiping it with their finger.
Speaker 3: The lady backs us up and talks about how delicate
Speaker 3: these things are that you can't even blow on them.
Speaker 2: Yikes.
Speaker 3: Collen looks thoughtfully at the picture and then announces its
Speaker 3: value at between thirty thousand and fifty thousand dollars conservatively.
Speaker 3: Your jaw drops. The lady is overjoyed. I liked the
Speaker 3: picture anyway, but now I really like it, she says.
Speaker 3: Cowan tells her that if this thing went to auction,
Speaker 3: a ton of people would want to bid on it.
Speaker 3: Great day in the morning, this is a fine You
Speaker 3: feel so much joy for the woman. That's what this
Speaker 3: show is all about. You finally make your way to
Speaker 3: the appraisal table. The expert looks over your sign, plugs
Speaker 3: it into confirm it still works, looks at the back
Speaker 3: and the bottom. She hands it back to you and
Speaker 3: tells you it's worth about three hundred dollars. You could cry,
Speaker 3: this is amazing. I found it behind a dumpster, you
Speaker 3: tell her excitedly. She smiles warmly at you. Isn't that
Speaker 3: the best place to find a treasure, she responds. You
Speaker 3: thank her, and then head out to your car, your
Speaker 3: prized moosehead sign cradled in your arms. You are walking
Speaker 3: on air. Thank you Antiques Roadshow, and thank you PBS.
Speaker 3: So a cool story, but rather uneventful, as roadshow tales go. Right,
Speaker 3: possibly we're going to fast forward a year and a half,
Speaker 3: Sally Guest, owner of the Dea gherettype, decides she wants
Speaker 3: to sell it. Okay, cool, it's worth quite a bit,
Speaker 3: and the estimate of value from Antique's Road Show just
Speaker 3: wasn't enough. She needed to get it authenticated to prove
Speaker 3: up that it actually is Edgar Allan Poe since that's
Speaker 3: where the value really is. So she reaches out to
Speaker 3: the Edgar Allen Poe Society in Baltimore. She sends them
Speaker 3: a copy of the de gerrettype. They reach out to
Speaker 3: a specialist, This artist and historian named Michael J. Deese.
Speaker 3: He wrote a book called The Portraits and de Garatt
Speaker 3: Types of Edgar Allan Poe. Right, so I think we
Speaker 3: call that a special Yeah, So the Poet Society contacted
Speaker 3: Guest and told her that it looked like her de
Speaker 3: garrettype was the real deal.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought was gonna be like, oh, it's actually
Speaker 2: a photo of Robert Todd Lincoln.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. Though it looked familiar to dece
Speaker 3: he actually recognized it pretty much immediately. And because there
Speaker 3: weren't that many of these deguera types of po he
Speaker 3: wrote the book on him. So, remember how there was
Speaker 3: a smudge or a scratch on the face of the image.
Speaker 3: He'd seen that before. In fact, of the only of
Speaker 3: all likely there's only a handful of these existence, only
Speaker 3: two had this slight flaw. And like he looked closely
Speaker 3: closely at the copy and he's like, I've examined this
Speaker 3: one before, back in nineteen eighty one. Whoa He handled
Speaker 3: the real thing when he was doing research for his book,
Speaker 3: and then it was at the hand In Booth Theater
Speaker 3: Library in New York City, a private collection inside the
Speaker 3: Player's Theatrical Club. That's how they do it at the
Speaker 3: Players Club, rubbing the toes on a mink rug as such,
Speaker 3: at least according to Rap and Forte in his hit
Speaker 3: playas Club. Hold on, I'm being told that's a different
Speaker 3: play as Club. Okay, So I'm glad we got that
Speaker 3: cleared up. Their interns are just like waving and yeah
Speaker 3: and the thanks guys. So d'z called the library and
Speaker 3: he asked about the DEA gherettype. Guess what theirs was missing? What? Yeah? So, meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Guest had contacted Cowen to tell him that she wanted
Speaker 3: to sell the de Garrett type and she wanted his
Speaker 3: help with it, and he's like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure of course.
Speaker 3: So he picks it up and takes it to his
Speaker 3: auction house's office in Cincinnati. And it's around this time
Speaker 3: that the episode actually airs, and that's when Cowen gets
Speaker 3: another call, this time from the FBI. So special Agent
Speaker 3: Joanna Looney from the FBI's Manhattan office let him know
Speaker 3: that the de Garrett type that he checked out for
Speaker 3: guests on the show was stolen and it had obviously
Speaker 3: crossed a few state lines since being lifted. So Cowen,
Speaker 3: he's a little rattled. He calls guest and he's like,
Speaker 3: you know what, sit tight. The Feds are on the way.
Speaker 3: So that the special Agent David Bass of the FBI's
Speaker 3: Midwest Art Crime.
Speaker 2: Team Bassin looney, massive, looney, I know, are.
Speaker 3: You kidding shows up at the office in Cincinnati and
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm here to take custody of the da
Speaker 3: Gett type. Give me po and what's crazy?
Speaker 2: I love that if the guy who invents the detective book,
Speaker 2: here's my favorite.
Speaker 3: Deeese hadn't contacted the FBI. What they The FBI saw
Speaker 3: the episode and I d'd the Dea Garrett type as
Speaker 3: the stolen one, which means it's someone's job at the
Speaker 3: FBI to watch antiques road show and keep an eye
Speaker 3: out for possibly hot kids. Oh wow, who knows if
Speaker 3: they still have that position, but I would be very
Speaker 3: good at it.
Speaker 2: You don't think they're at at home watching it and
Speaker 2: there all of a sudden, they just drop the remote, like.
Speaker 3: Wait, I think that someone gets the episode. They just
Speaker 3: start typing stuff in every time.
Speaker 2: Probably, I mean, I'm always blown away by how people
Speaker 2: kept to do these jobs. Yeah, so I'm sure the
Speaker 2: FBI has people. I mean, you hear about how the
Speaker 2: CIA has people reading books.
Speaker 3: And know exactly. So the FEDS wanted to get their
Speaker 3: hands on the de Garrett type to like officially authenticate it.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. The DEA gherettype wasn't on display
Speaker 3: at the library. It was in the archives, and the
Speaker 3: last known sighting of it was when D's gave it
Speaker 3: the once over for the research Library couldn't pin down
Speaker 3: exactly when it was stolen stolen like this, So they're like,
Speaker 3: we know it was stolen, but just in the last
Speaker 3: thirty years, okay, because they're well, I guess twenty years.
Speaker 3: Because there was no hard timeline for this theft, the
Speaker 3: FEDS are like, well, we can't really file charges against anyone.
Speaker 3: So they could prove that guests had indeed bought the
Speaker 3: da Geat type at the shop in Iowa.
Speaker 2: Okay, so she's clear, So she's clean Oka.
Speaker 3: And then it didn't look like the shop owners knew
Speaker 3: that they were trafficking and stolen goods.
Speaker 2: So they're doing like a reverse prove multice Falcon style.
Speaker 3: Yes, but the owners of the shop, they couldn't pin
Speaker 3: down how they wound up with the photos. There's all
Speaker 3: these dead ends. Guests had to turn it over to
Speaker 3: the library, and so she called it donation. But there
Speaker 3: wasn't a whole lot of choice in it for her.
Speaker 3: And so while it was worth thirty to fifty thousand,
Speaker 3: she'd paid less than one hundred for it. So she's
Speaker 3: not like left, you know, in debt.
Speaker 2: And she also does she get like a thirty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars tax credit for the donation, I don't know, or
Speaker 2: she get a three hundred dollars tax donation one hundred.
Speaker 3: She paid one hundred hundred, So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But she was cool about the whole thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's a little irritated, but she understood the situation. She said, quote,
Speaker 3: I'm glad the piece is hopefully where it belongs, that
Speaker 3: they will take care of it and that people will
Speaker 3: eventually get to see it. And so it was eventually authenticated.
Speaker 3: The FBI returned the Degherett type to the library in
Speaker 3: New York City on November eight, two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: According to PBS, quote. Raymond Wemlinger, the library's curator, confirmed
Speaker 3: that the Poe picture is once again back in the
Speaker 3: library's possession and after an absence of many years, available
Speaker 3: for viewing by qualified.
Speaker 2: Researchers like bring your white gloves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it was so just just a few months
Speaker 3: after that, the library put the Daguerat type up for
Speaker 3: auction at Sotheby's.
Speaker 2: They sold it.
Speaker 3: They sold it winning bid one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm guessing exactly got bills too. Sally is probably feeling
Speaker 3: less charitable about the whole thing at this point. She's like,
Speaker 3: as long as it's in the museum. Oh no, it's
Speaker 3: not so, Zara, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: I love these are all great stories, but I love
Speaker 2: that the ground Post story at the end, with the
Speaker 2: basically the guy who invents the detective novel, there is
Speaker 2: a whole mystery about his photograph, which is the craziest
Speaker 2: evidence they have. Like, because photographs, as you know, is
Speaker 2: where we start to get the unreality. Between like eighteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine, when you invent the photograph, essentially all art changes,
Speaker 2: especially on painting and in particular, and you get you know,
Speaker 2: start getting abstracted and more expressionists and all that the
Speaker 2: art no longer has to portray a scene, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're all for free. It's basically like what Einstein did
Speaker 2: with like general relativity, where or like Freud did, we
Speaker 2: all of a sudden like we don't know what to believe anymore,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, oh, everything becomes interpretive. So I
Speaker 2: love that that somehow Poe is tied to that history
Speaker 2: is so beautiful. That's my ridiculous takeaway. You know what's yours?
Speaker 3: Oh my takeaway? Well, I didn't know you were interested in.
Speaker 2: I don't always ask, but I'm always in.
Speaker 3: H my takeaway, I think that the appeal of antiques roadshow,
Speaker 3: Like we talked about all the different kinds of appraisals
Speaker 3: that happen on the show, but this notion of that
Speaker 3: you could stumble into something that is worth far more
Speaker 3: than you would think. And you were talking about how
Speaker 3: your sister can identify all these things like based on
Speaker 3: much he's learned. And one of the things that I
Speaker 3: learned is like never refinished furniture. Yes, so it'll look
Speaker 3: all beat up and they're like, no, no, no, you
Speaker 3: don't want to clean this thing. Yeah yeah, so it's
Speaker 3: like all these little things. And then why why that
Speaker 3: is that you have to have the patina and the
Speaker 3: and the look of age and such.
Speaker 2: Let the accumulated age be there.
Speaker 3: And I think for me, I sometimes I don't understand
Speaker 3: it's appealed to me because I am not someone who
Speaker 3: saves anything.
Speaker 2: That's why I don't clean anything, because one day these
Speaker 2: will all be antiques and they'll be really val.
Speaker 3: You collect a lot of stuff. I don't collect stuff.
Speaker 2: I have penny collections right now and trying desperately to
Speaker 2: get a twenty twenty five penny so I can have.
Speaker 3: The last penny, all right, So if anyone out there
Speaker 3: has a twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty five penny to hard to get.
Speaker 3: Your collector guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, fact so.
Speaker 3: But and I think, like, I'm not a collector, but
Speaker 3: I love watching the excitement.
Speaker 2: What does it for you? Just the human moments?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And I think like sometimes it's when someone gets,
Speaker 3: you know, the wind taken out of their sails because
Speaker 3: they think that they've got, you know, they know everything.
Speaker 3: But I really do love the moments where people are
Speaker 3: just totally stunned and it's just I loved this bowl
Speaker 3: and it you know, it's weird looking and it's crazy,
Speaker 3: but I love it. And like you were saying too,
Speaker 3: learning about the various schools of.
Speaker 2: Art and yeah, because you're like maybe you have the
Speaker 2: big story in your head. You're always adding different chapters too.
Speaker 2: So when you learn about something like that, does that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, make you feel some kind of way really like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the Adirondack school.
Speaker 3: Of other arrow for the quiver I got you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's have a talk back to celebrate this.
Speaker 2: Cheers to that.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I let cheat.
Speaker 5: So I learned recently that I can't listen to your
Speaker 5: podcast while I'm working out because I start laughing too hard.
Speaker 5: The most recent time that this happened was when I
Speaker 5: was listening to the Johnny Cash episode and you were
Speaker 5: talking about Banana Winds and Elizabeth said this album will
Speaker 5: knock the fruit out of your banana wins, and I
Speaker 5: started laughing so hard that I actually fell off of
Speaker 5: a pull up bark.
Speaker 2: You is done.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's it for today. You can find
Speaker 3: us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime on both Bluesky and Instagram, and we're on
Speaker 3: YouTube at Ridiculous Crime pod, email us at Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com, and then, most importantly, leave a
Speaker 3: talkback on the free iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
Speaker 3: edited by Auctioneer to the Stars Dave Kusten, starring EMILYE.
Speaker 3: Rutger as Judith. Research is by Vintage hot Dog authenticator
Speaker 3: Marissa Brown and basketball memorabilia specialist Jabari Davis. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by composers and performers of the Antiques Roadshow
Speaker 3: alternate theme song Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe
Speaker 3: is for by Botany five hundred guests. Hair and makeup
Speaker 3: by a Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Hopeful
Speaker 3: Thrifter Ben Bolen and Garage Sale enthusiast Noel Brown. Ridicous
Speaker 3: Crime Say It One More Timequious Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four More Podcasts
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.