Antiques Roadshow

In July, Emily and I went to the Antiques Roadshow in Billings. It was pretty awesome. We got to the building, gave them our tickets and got in the first line. It moved pretty fast and we were in line for about an hour-hour and a half. It was really fun to see all of the random stuff that people had brought in. We were allowed to take two items each. I took the statue my uncle had given me and a violin Carrie had gotten from her grandmother. Emily brought a mortar and pestle that belonged to a work friend and a calendar that Christie had found in the wall of her apartment when she was remodeling.
Once you get into the area where they do all the pricing, you can't have a phone or camera so I don't have any pics but the people standing in line were enough. I would definitely recommend that anyone going to get tickets go as early as possible since those people got in and got out... fast. We got in around 11 and didn't get done until 3. Yes, some of that was dawdling but no more than a half hour or so. After you get to the main area, you get two tickets, one for each of your items. Mine were Metalwork & Sculpture and Musical Instruments. Emily got Folk Art and something else we determined was more or less Miscellaneous. It was the longest line, by far.
We started with my little statue. The guy was very, very apologetic while telling me that my troubadour is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. I wasn't expecting much so I wasn't very crushed. The guy seemed a little taken aback that I wasn't more crushed. Um, okay.
Our next stop was the Folk Art. Oh yeah baby, we got the married twin (Okay, I know that's really bad not to know his name, but I don't watch enough to actually know names). This woman with a totally sycophantic gleam in her eye tried to cut in front of us but was rebuffed 'cause she didn't have an item. The mortar and pestle ended up being the highest item of our day. The guy and the other woman at the table were pretty impressed. I'm still convinced we might have been on TV if Emily had lied and said it was her great-grandmother's. Oh well.
The next stop was musical instruments. The first table where we didn't get to walk right up. The guy there got excited when he saw the case. It's a fancy, shmancy thing but the violin... turned out not to be what he had expected. He said that it was "only" worth something like $250-300. I say, meh, for a $10 garage-sale buy, that's pretty awesome.
The last stop was Collectibles-or-whatever-that-section-was-called. There were a lot of people in line. We ended up waiting for over and hour. The guy that looked at Christie's calendar was actually very intrigued. It ended up that similar lithographs were selling for about $50-88. This was an unusual litho because the calendar, all twelve tear-off months were still there.
We got to do the thing at the end where you talk to folks but didn't make it on TV. Well, not on purpose. If you see a green skirt covering a wide butt and a white shirt with criss-cross in the back, that's me.

Episode 1 -- April 11 at 7pm
Episode 2 -- April 18 at 7pm
Episode 3 -- April 25 at 7pm