Collectors show and tell as ‘Antiques Roadshow’ films new season at Maryland Zoo in Baltimore

The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore was abuzz Tuesday with more than mere animal activity.

Beyond the black-tailed prairie dogs, people toting paintings, silverware, and oddities of all shapes and sizes queued up to find out how much money their cherished items were worth — and whether they’d land an appearance on “Antiques Roadshow,” the long-running PBS series that was filming at the zoo for the day.

Rosalie — producers requested attendees be identified by first names only — arrived with a trio of Orioles signs from 1966, 1979 and 1983, all years she attended the team’s World Series games.

“I got them for free … with a lot of excitement,” Rosalie, a 78-year-old retired psychotherapist who lives in Locust Point, said as she recounted taking the 1966 sign from the stadium, and the other two from light poles she and her brother climbed in Federal Hill.

She learned Tuesday that they’re worth around $5,500 as a set — a value she imagined is influenced by how well the Orioles have been playing lately.

It’s the first time the show has returned to Charm City since a stop in 2007, during filming for Season 12, a spokesperson said. This year’s Baltimore visit was the last stop of the 2024 production tour, which focused on historic locations and included visits to Las Vegas, Nevada; Bentonville, Arkansas; Littleton, Colorado; and Urbandale, Iowa.

Each city visit will result in three episodes for Season 29 of “Antiques Roadshow” airing on PBS next year, producers said. Around 5 million people tune in each week for “Antiques Roadshow,” which has received 21 Emmy Award nominations over the years and is PBS’s most-watched ongoing series.

In Baltimore, 2,700 pairs of free tickets were distributed to attend the event.

The show “was due to come back to Baltimore,” said “Antiques Roadshow” executive producer Marsha Bemko, noting that Baltimore’s location made the event accessible to people from outside of the state. She joined “Antiques Roadshow” in 1999 as the series’ senior producer.

Of the more than 25,000 items brought to “Antiques Roadshow” tapings during the five-city tour, only around 150 appraisals per stop were filmed, producers said. Still, at her previous stop in Urbandale, Iowa, Bemko estimated she walked over 9 miles during filming.

“Most of the people who are coming today won’t be taped. They’re coming to an event,” Bemko said. “And they want to have a good experience and they’re excited to have this stuff looked at. Most of them will think it’s worth more than it is. So the very least they can have is a pleasant day at the zoo.”

Producers were looking for locations that could accommodate weather changes, large crowds and film crews, and the zoo agreed to host them, Bemko said.

Some, like Rosalie and her husband Ivo, didn’t have to travel far.

Ivo, a retired banker in his 70s, said the appraisal of the couple’s Orioles signs in Ikea frames was “shocking,” and that they’d hung them in their son’s bedroom when he was a kid. He added that they put the signs on display in their windows for game days when they lived in Federal Hill.

The couple attended previous “Antiques Roadshow” events in D.C., Richmond and Wilmington, and have watched the show “from day one,” Rosalie said.

Myrtis Bedolla, the founding director of Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore, joined “Antiques Roadshow” for the first time Tuesday as an appraiser. She said her expertise is primarily in works by African American artists from the 20th and 21st centuries.

But sitting at the paintings booth in the morning, she inspected works of all kinds.

“At the tables, we’re generalists,” she said.

Another appraiser, Radcliffe Jewelers’ founder Paul Winicki, said he started his work with “Antiques Roadshow” nearly two decades ago at the Baltimore Convention Center. More than 40 years ago, he opened his jewelry store, which he still owns and which has stores in Pikesville and Newark, Delaware.

On Tuesday morning, he was appraising a small lidded silver container that could have once stored sugar and bore a Bonaparte crest, engraved in 1876.

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, who is buried in Baltimore, was the first wife of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, Jérôme Bonaparte. The silver object was owned by someone farther down the family tree, Winicki estimated, but could be valued at around $2,500, particularly for a Baltimore collector.

It was a “neat piece for a silver nut like myself,” he said. “If you were in Wisconsin, people might say ‘Who is that?’ … Bonaparte stuff would bring more money in Baltimore, generally, than anywhere else, because she resided here and she was from the Patterson family.”

Carol, a 74-year-old semi-retired nurse, came to Tuesday’s event from the Eastern Shore with her daughter, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in tow — plus multiple dolls for appraisal.

One — in a box marked “Grandma’s Doll” and made of composition and real wood, with a bisque face — dates back to the 1890s and would sell for around $200 to $300.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Carol said. “And I wasn’t going to bring her, because I thought she was plastic.”

Sometimes, however, it’s the most unassuming items that surprise.

Larry, 63, traveled to the Antiques Roadshow set from Pennsylvania with his wife Regina, 65, and was filmed as he spoke with appraiser Ken Farmer, who counts folk art among his specialties.

The item in question: a small, wooden Shaker box that belonged to Larry’s mother.

The estimated retail value: $12,000 to $18,000.

“This is a little Shaker box made around 1851,” reads a note stored inside. “Treasure it always as I have for many years.”

The note gifting the box to someone for Christmas, plus writing on the underside of the box, accounted for about half of the box’s value, said Larry, who works for a consulting company.

“It’ll stay in the family,” and in a safe, he said. “I don’t need a grandkid playing with it.”