Woman Fights Back Tears After Appraiser Shares The Real Value Of Grandma's Painting
It looked like the kind of ordinary painting you’d see at your local library, or maybe your dentist’s office. Even the woman who owned the art thought it was just something that looked good on her grandmother’s wall. But when she brought the piece to Antiques Roadshow, she confronted a hidden truth. And it made her question everything she knew about her grandmother, her family’s past, and her own future.
An unusual heirloom
Some families may pass down vintage pearls or delicate furniture, but the young woman’s heirloom was that artwork. The print of a Native American tribe leisurely walking down a mountainside had “always hung right above [her grandmother’s] bed.” And for years, she had barely paid any attention to it.
Her theory
Why did her grandmother attach such sentimental value to what seemed to be a reproduction of an ordinary painting? Even the woman wasn’t sure where the piece came from, or why her grandmother loved it so much, but she was able to come up with a theory — albeit an unusual one.
Hesitant to investigate
“Her dad, I’m guessing, would’ve given it to her after she spent the summer at a dude ranch when she was 19,” the owner of the work suggested on Antiques Roadshow. Based on family history, she guessed that her grandma got the print sometime in the 1940s.
A nerve-wracking incident
The woman wasn’t even sure if the work was indeed a reproduction. She couldn’t have known it then, but the difference in value between a painting and a print can be thousands of dollars — perhaps more. And while she may have assumed the work wasn't an original, a nerve-racking incident planted a seed of doubt in her mind.
