Season 6

The treasures of Tucson's attics are on display. Items appraised during the hour (the first of three in Tucson) include some that are unusually valuable, including a 1790s sideboard and a Western landscape by Edgar Payne. Then there's a 150-year-old Navajo weaved blanket. Appraiser Donald Ellis calls it “a national treasure.” Taped in June 2001 at the City of Tucson Convention Center. Host: Dan Elias.

Items appraised in Tucson (Part 2 of three) include 18th-century leather fire buckets and an art-deco bronze sculpture. Also: host Dan Elias visits an 18th-century mission church, San Xavier del Bac, which is known as “the white dove of the desert.”

A three-program stop in Tucson concludes. Appraised: an 1890s silver service; two season passes for the 19th-century baseball team the Cincinnati Red Stockings; and a 19th-century Persion rug. Also: host Dan Elias visits a Tucson resort hotel founded in 1930 by Arizona's first congresswoman, Isabella Greenway.

The first of three shows taped in New York City. Items shown include a Winslow Homer etching, a collection of Ramones memorabilia, a 1765 table and a futuristic toy car. Also: host Dan Elias visits the Museum of the City of New York, where items on display range from a gown worn to George Washington's Inaugural Ball to a Playbill for “Guys and Dolls.”

Items appraised in New York City (Part 2 of three) include a painting by Jesse Arms Botke; an 18th-century silver cream jug by Boston silversmith Jacob Hurd; and a collection of vintage luggage stickers. Also: host Dan Elias visits Manhattan's Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Items appraised as a three-week stint in New York City concludes include a signed copy of James Joyce's “Ulysses,” illustrated by Henri Matisse; an 1880s weathervane shaped like a codfish; and a collection of turn-of-the-20th-century poster art. Also: host Dan Elias visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Items appraised in San Diego (Part 1 of three) range from an 8th-century Chinese earthenware horse to a Tom Mix lariat and a sarong worn by Dorothy Lamour. Then, it's Christmas in July for the owner of a Santa sleigh that was made in the 1920s or '30s. He paid $70 for it; now it's worth $3000-$4000. Also: host Dan Elias leads a tour of San Diego's Balboa Park and visits the Marston House, an arts and crafts style mansion.

Items appraised in San Diego (Part 2 of three) include a yellow-diamond Tiffany pendant, a pair of 18th-century candlesticks and sheet music of jazz pianist James P. Johnson. Also: host Dan Elias visits the Hotel Del Coronado, a vintage-1890 resort located across Mission Bay from San Diego.

Conclusion. Items appraised in San Deigo include an ivory-and-diamond ring with a cameo of Britain's King Charles I; an 18th-century chest; and a Dr. Seuss “kangaroo bird” sculpture. Also: host Dan Elias visits the San de Alcala Mission church, which was founded in 1769 by Junipero Serra, the father of California missions.

Part 1 of three in Indianapolis: a 19th-century French nude bronze; a combination pipe and tomahawk; a collection of Civil War bullets. There's also a picture N.C. Wyeth painted for a 1913 issue of Harper's magazine. The painting's worth: $250,000. Also: host Dan Elias recalls the history of the Indianapolis 500 during a visit to the Motor Speedway Museum, and admires Persian tribal weavings at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Evaluated in Indianapolis (Part 2 of three): a 1920s Little Orphan Annie Halloween costume and an Empire-style Italian marble-top table. Also: host Dan Elias visits the Indianapolis Chidren's Museum, which covers 13 acres and bills itself as the world's largest.

Appraised in Indianapolis (conclusion): a porcelain bowl commissioned by Catherine the Great, and sci-fi illustrations by Frank R. Paul (1884-1963) valued at up to $40,000. Also: host Dan Elias visits Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetary, the final resting place of John Dillinger, poet James Whitcomb Riley and President Benjamin Harrison.

Items appraised at Miami's Coconut Grove Convention Center (Part 1 of three) include a Federal period gaming table bought for $300; an Art Deco pendant brooch; and an autographed team photo of the 1929 Philadelphia Athletics that includes four Hall of Famers. Also autographed are two Elvis Presley recordings made for Sun Records. Also: host Dan Elias visits the 1891 home of Miami-area pioneer Ralph Monroe.

Items appraised in Miami (Part 2 of three) include a Persian rug, a Tiffany lamp and collections of Norman Rockwell posters and Beatles 45-rpm records (the sleeves are worth more than the records). Then there are Chinese vases, purportedly from the 6th to 9th centuries, and a gold “lifetime pass” to American League baseball games issued to George M. Cohan in the 1910s. Says appraiser Simeon Lipman: “It's phenomenal.” Also: host Dan Elias visits Vizcaya, farm-machine magnate James Deering's early 20th-century Biscayne Bay mansion. “It looks,” exclaims Elias, “as if a royal family had lived there for hundreds of years.”

Conclusion. Appraised in Miami: a 1950s Cuban alligator handbag (with an alligator on top); an 18th-century French “orbit clock”; a bracelet inscribed by Martin Van Buren; and an early-20th-century chair that appraiser Leigh Keno calls “rococo revival on steroids.” Also: host Dan Elias offers a thumbnail history of Miami (“the billion-dollar sandbar”); and admires the displays of industrial-design objects from the 1930s at Florida International University's Wolfsonian Museum.

Part 1 (of three). Items appraised in New Orleans range from a 1654 Rembrandt etching to an early 20th-century guidebook to New Orleans' red-light district, Storyville. And there's a pair of 1920s Lalique glass figures, which put a smile on their owner's face. Their value? “Much higher than I would have thought,” he says. “More in line with what I would like.” Also: host Dan Elias offers a thumbnail Mardi Gras history at the Louisiana State Museum's Presbytere and surveys the African-art collection at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Items appraised in New Orleans (Part 2 of three) include a Howdy Doody doll, a 1751 English silver tankard and a book about the U.S. Constitution from Jefferson Davis's library. Then there's a 1935 art-deco promotional poster for the ocean liner Normandie that appraiser Nicholas Lowry calls “part of the visual vernacular,” and a rotating oyster plate from 1857 that appraiser David Lackey calls “the holy grail of oyster plates.” Also: host Dan Elias visits restored New Orleans homes and surveys the Newcomb-pottery collection at the Lousiana Museum.

Conclusion. Items appraised in New Orleans include an 1858 map of the Mississippi River, Mardi Gras memorabilia (including a Krewe of Rex coin from 1862) and a collection of Civil War-era copies of the Philadelphia Inquirer, including the papers from the day after the Gettysburg Address and the Lincoln assassination. Also: promotional materials for the 1934 movie “It Happened One Night.”