APPRAISER: I recall this, the... Rodney Dangerfield, the comedian... (chuckles) ...he told a joke, he said... He'd s, say to somebody, "Your mama's cooking is so bad..." GUEST: (chuckles) APPRAISER: ...that when he went to fix the, the hole in the screen door in the kitchen, the flies pitched in to help.

GUEST: (laughs) APPRAISER: You know?

And the reason I mention it is because this is what this thing did, is, it kept out the flies... GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: ...and mice and all kinds of other things.

But how did you come across that?

GUEST: I was in Santa Fe about 18 years ago with my mother... APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: ...and they were having an auction up there.

And she had seen this piece, uh, a year or so earlier in, in an antique shop in Albuquerque.

And at that time, they wanted $700 or $800 for it.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And, uh, she didn't think too much about that.

She d, wasn't interested in paying that much, so... We saw the piece, then, about a year later in Santa Fe... APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: ...and the... She paid, uh, uh, somewhere between $200 and $300.

She doesn't really remember.

It was quite a while ago.

APPRAISER: At, at the auction?

GUEST: At the auction, so... APPRAISER: And you were there with her, you watched her buy it, and...?

GUEST: Yeah, uh-huh.

No... APPRAISER: You'd gone to a lot of auctions, or did... GUEST: No, she had been to quite a few auctions before.

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: But, uh, I think that was the first one in Al-, in, uh, Santa Fe she did a bid to.

APPRAISER: In Santa Fe.

Well, there, there's a good chance that it w, that it was made right around here.

At least we can say it was made west of the Mississippi.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: It's very difficult to be specific about regions out here.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: It could have been made in Colorado.

But it is wonderful, because it's, it's typical of furniture made west of the Mississippi in the, in the West, because it is of this ponderosa pine, this nice, soft pine.

It has a, a, a rustic quality about it, which makes it special in and of itself.

It doesn't need fancy carving or shiny mahogany.

It really has a charm about it.

And I love the verticality of it.

Doesn't it, it's, it's... GUEST: It's very tall.

(laughs) APPRAISER: How t, you're probably about... You're about six foot?

GUEST: Six-four.

APPRAISER: And so it's probably almost eight feet tall.

GUEST: Yeah, in fact, it wouldn't fit in the room we were going to put it in.

We had to put it in another room.

APPRAISER: It, it is, uh... It is very nice, and if you... If, it, it, it has these punched-tin panels, which, which actually, uh, are, were often made from containers that came west, uh, along the Santa Fe Trail.

They came west-- things like pickled oysters would come west in the 1860s and the 1870s.

And sometimes they made, they reused those tin containers and re-punched them to use them for pie safes.

And I'm not sure that this is where these came from.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: But I've seen others that have the name of a, of a, an oyster company or something from an, an eastern piece of tin that came west.

And the, the owners' names.

So... You can see, H.W.

We, we can only guess who that was, right?

GUEST: (chuckling) That's right, that's... APPRAISER: And, um, the nice thing about the inside is this salmon pink paint.

And at one time, the whole outside had salmon pink paint on it, which must have been really very vivid.

Did your mom keep, uh, pies inside, by the way?

Or... GUEST: No, she used it mostly for a bookcase.

We had a lot of cookbooks, mainly, in there.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And, uh, various kind of books, and that's all that was in it.

APPRAISER: And I'm sure your mama's cooking was good, right?

GUEST: Yes.

(laughs) APPRAISER: Contrary to the Rodney Dangerfield, uh... I met her earlier.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: So I think she's, she probably was good.

This paper, I, I bet you knew that wasn't original, right?

GUEST: No.

(both laugh) APPRAISER: It's kind of nice to see this.

It's part of its history, and I think I'd leave that in there.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: Here are some cows and s, some ducks over that salmon paint.

I won't try to peel it off.

Well, your... I think your, your mother should be, be happy, because having paid, you said, about $200 to $300 for this, for this pie safe, made around 1870 or 1860, out here in the West, um, I'd say that the value today would be, because of its height, that, because of its verticality and because of its wonderful construction, which includes these through tenons-- not through, but into the door with pins.

On the side, you have typical construction, see?

Down here with these through tenons.

And because of just the rustic quality of it, I'd say the value would be about $3,500 or so today.

GUEST: Oh, that's, well, um, she'll be glad to hear that.

(laughs) APPRAISER: Okay, great.