Next Saturday thousands of people will line up in front of the Baltimore Convention Center, each carrying a treasure.
If the treasure is too large to carry -- an occasional table, say, or a Majolica fountain -- they'll be pulling it in a little red wagon or on a dolly.
Most probably the weather will be brutally hot and humid. But the 6,500 people who get tickets won't care. This will be their chance to be part of the addictively watchable PBS series "Chubb's Antiques Roadshow," in production this summer for its fourth season.
Part carnival, part seminar on antiques and collectibles, the "Roadshow" -- produced by WGBH in Boston -- is the most popular series on public television. "These are the faces of America telling America's stories," says the show's host, Chris Jussel, explaining its popularity. "These are their objects, their treasures, from their basements and attics. No actors are doing a prewritten script. We learn something, and it's entertaining." J. Michael Flanigan, a Baltimore appraiser and antiques dealer who spends part of his summers as a regular on the show, agrees. "It's a cross between the information and education PBS is so good at and 'The Price Is Right,'" he says.
Flanigan is a trim, affable man with graying curls and a warm, toothy smile who handles objects in his Bolton Hill home as if they resonate with history -- which they do. Surrounded with the American decorative arts and furniture that are his specialty, Flanigan lives with his wife, Gregory Weidman, furnishings consultant at Hampton Mansion; his two children; and his Jack Russell terriers.
Flanigan, a native Baltimorean, was a history major at Towson University. When he graduated he took a job cleaning and fixing antiques to tide him over the summer. "And here I am," he says with a grin, "Twenty-three years later."
His education continued as he worked for J.W. Berry & Son, a Baltimore antiques firm no longer in business. For seven years he repaired and restored furniture, much of it from museums and historic sites.
In 1985 he became administrator for the Kaufman Americana Foundation, where he helped put together the National Gallery of Art's only exhibit of American decorative arts from a private collection. He's now in business for himself in Baltimore as a dealer in antique American furnishings.
Four years ago a letter came in the mail asking if Flanigan would be interested in being an appraiser on a new show for PBS, modeled after one that had been running in Britain for 20 years. He would have to pay his own way to get to the cities where the show would be in production. "A lot of people brushed them off," Flanigan says. " 'We're not interested. No thanks.' But I had the strong feeling that antiques were entering the mainstream and that the show had the potential to tap into the public interest in a way that hadn't been tapped into before."
The first year the crowds usually numbered less than a thousand. For the first show of the second year in Pittsburgh, 7,000 people showed up. Pretty amazing when you consider that "Antiques Roadshow" wasn't aired at any regular time so the series wasn't always easy for viewers to find.
Only 13 shows were taped that first year, but they were so popular, says Flanigan, that PBS bought the British version to supplement them. "Roadshow" now has more than 10 million viewers. "Once it became a big hit," says Flanigan, "They started getting letters from [appraisers and dealers] saying, 'So sorry we couldn't participate last year because of scheduling conflicts, but we'd love to this year.' "
Although the "Antiques Roadshow" flows quite seamlessly on the air, the day of filming is, according to Flanigan, controlled chaos.
This season the production crew is trying something new. Starting at 7: 30 a.m., they will be handing out 6,500 first-come, first-serve tickets to three shifts: 8 a.m., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Ticket holders can leave and return when it's their time.
The "Roadshow" process will begin with triage, says Flanigan. When you get inside the Convention Center, a staff member will examine your object and direct you to one of the many stations. Flanigan himself expects to be at a furniture or decorative arts table. About 75 appraisers and dealers will be on staff. They'll give each item a free, non-binding appraisal. "You can bring in two items but people skirt it," says Flanigan. "They'll have another couple in their pocket." All in all, he estimates, the experts will look at some 10,000 objects that day.
If you're wondering how that 9-foot mantel made it on the show, 8 to 10 large pieces are trucked in at each stop. The owners have sent in photographs and descriptions, and the "Roadshow" chooses the most interesting ones. (Baltimore's deadline for submitting requests was March.)
Fewer than 50 of the best items, the ones with the most interesting stories attached to them, will actually make it on the air. The crew will be filming from roughly 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and they can film about six segments an hour.
When an appraiser finds something he thinks is a good story, he sends a "runner" to get the producer and then makes his pitch to him. The producer decides if it gets filmed. "The 'Roadshow' rule is you find it, it's yours," says Flanigan. The appraiser or dealer who brings the object to the producer's attention will be the one talking to the owner on TV.
What makes the series so watchable isn't the unexpected value of the antiques featured -- often owners seem blase about the fact that their Chippendale chair is worth thousands of dollars. It's the stories people have about their objects, or the broader historical significance.
Those who haven't seen the show (which airs on Maryland Public Television Monday nights at 8) might think the only draw is "found" money -- the pair of candlesticks someone bought at a yard sale turns out to be worth a thousand dollars. Not so, says Flanigan. "For a big chunk of people, the 'Roadshow' connects them back to part of a life they've lost."
He remembers the woman who brought in a World War II bomber jacket with bombs hand-painted on the back. Beneath them someone had lettered the names of the German cities that had been hit. Her brother was a fighter pilot in the war, she told Flanigan.
He noticed that she wore a necklace with the Hebrew symbol of life on it, and asked if she and her brother were Jewish. When she said yes, he said, "That must have been very important to him, that he could bomb Nazi cities." "Yes," she told Flanigan, "It was so important that on his deathbed he made me promise to put that in his obituary. But don't ask me about that on TV or I'll start to cry."
Having a good personal story behind your item, in other words, is just as important as having a priceless antique -- if your objective is to get in front of the camera.
Historical significance is important too. Take the woman who brought in a slave tag her father had found at a South Carolina beach. How it had come into her possession wasn't much of a story, but what Flanigan could tell her -- and the TV audience -- about the tag's history made it of interest to the show's producer.
A slave in Charleston in the 19th century was given one of these small pieces of brass with his occupation engraved on it so he could move freely around the town. "A fisherman would have one that had a number, a date and the word 'fisher,' " explains Flanigan, "Or someone would presume a black man in a boat was running away."
Flanigan estimated the tag's worth at around $7,000 because it was one of the earliest examples he had seen. (Only Charleston made slave tags of brass, not leather or something equally perishable. Most other tags haven't survived.) It wasn't how unexpectedly valuable the woman's tag was that made the item notable, Flanigan says, but the story of the tag itself. "When you held it in your hand, you could understand something of the nature of being a slave in Charleston in the early 19th century."
Everyone talks about Americans not being interested in their history, he adds. "But the fact that 7,000 people come out for the 'Roadshow' tells me there's greater interest than people give them credit for."
At the show
If you're going to the "Roadshow"...
* You can bring one or two items for appraisal.
* Wear sensible shoes.
* If your object is heavy, use a luggage cart.
* If you can't stand in line long hours, bring a folding chair.
* If your object is fragile, pack it carefully.
* Whatever you know about your item, know it well enough to tell the appraiser all the details or write them down. Such information provides important clues about its value.
* If you already know everything about the item, including its worth, it's not going to make good TV. Part of the fun is the treasure hunt.
* Obscure local references in an object's history won't register with a national audience. You'll get your appraisal, but you probably won't be on the show.
* The "Roadshow" doesn't do coins and stamps, because their values are so cut-and-dried, or antiquities (anything that needs carbon dating to be authenticated).
* There's a rule of antiques that says, "Objects gravitate to the most famous person they can find." In other words, many antiques have family stories connecting them to historical figures -- stories that may or may not be true. Don't be too disappointed to find that Jefferson Davis probably didn't sleep in your antique foldaway bed, given its patent dates.
Show time
What: Chubb's Antiques Roadshow
Where: Baltimore Convention Center
When: Saturday, June 19, starting at 7: 30 a.m.
What's happening: Experts will give free verbal appraisals of antiques and collectibles. A few will be taped for the PBS series. 6,500 tickets for 3 timed shifts will be handed out.
Where else it's happening: This summer the series travels to eight new cities: Tampa, Birmingham, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Des Moines, Toronto, Columbus, Ohio and Providence, Rhode Island.
Where it airs: Maryland Public Television on Mondays at 8 p.m.
For more information: Visit the Web site at www.pbs.org/antiques, or call toll free 888-762-3749.