Antiquing with the Roadshow – Behind the scenes at the show’s stop in Baton Rouge

Video above by Brandi Simmons, 225’s director of online operations.

There are a lot of lines to wait in at Antiques Roadshow. Once past the lobby of the Baton Rouge River Center, you follow a snaking line that looks like a queue for security check at the airport. After that, you come to what the Antiques Roadshow crew calls “triage,” where an initial appraiser looks at your item and determines which appraisal line you’ll go to next.

Then it’s to the main room of the River Center, where more than 20 lines curve outward from what resembles a massive circus tent with no roof in the center. Inside, it’s a veritable circus of activity, with a number of cameras simultaneously shooting commentary by host Mark L. Walberg on one side and the main taped appraisals on the other while about 20 appraisal stations form a circle around it all, with experts looking at everything from Asian art and folk art to clocks and sports memorabilia.

A couple of scavenger-hunting producers lurk around the lines, trying to find an exceptional item to be featured on camera, scooping the people from the line and whisking them off to a green room for prepping. Meanwhile the rest of the more than 5,000 attendees that stream in throughout the day, and have a very high chance of not appearing on TV—only about 60-80 get a taped appraisal—wait their turn to find out if grandma’s old china or that Civil War-era musket are worth anything.

Still, in all the chaos, I heard one woman in a very long line remark to a friend, “They’re doing a good job of keeping everything in order.” Indeed, this is the 18th season of the popular PBS show, so by now the producers, 40-member crew and more than 100 volunteers know what they’re doing.

“At any given time, there are three taped appraisals happening,” says Hannah Auerbach of Antiques Roadshow. That includes the segments you see on TV as well as online-only appraisals. Attendees are given a designated time to arrive at the River Center, the first at 8 a.m. and the last at 5 p.m. “It usually all ends around 8 p.m., but that’s definitely not when we’re done for the day,” Auerbach laughs.

Baton Rouge was one of eight summer stops for the show, among Detroit, Boise, Kansas City and others. And the crew received a warm welcome from locals, with LPB hosting a party at the Old State Capitol the night before, Mayor Kip Holden declaring the day of the taping Antiques Roadshow Day and host Mark L. Walberg visiting several local landmarks with the crew, including Magnolia Mounds, Port Hudson and the LSU Museum of Art, where they looked at pieces from Clementine Hunter.

This was the show’s second visit to Louisiana, the first being New Orleans in 2001. Marsha Bemko, the show’s executive producer, talked with 225 last week about how they pick locations and what they expected to see from the Louisiana attendees.

The items that found their way to Baton Rouge ran the gamut of old cameras, military buttons, a stately-looking baby carriage for twins, paintings, rifles of all sizes, a greyhound decal from an old Greyhound bus, an early edition of A Confederacy of Dunces, and plenty more.

“We really want something new that we haven’t seen before,” Auerbach says. “Something that has a good story and something that the guest maybe knows nothing about.”

For each stop on the show’s tour, producers pull from a pool of about 150 appraisers, some of whom request to be included in certain cities. Bryce Reveley, a New Orleans-based rug and textile expert, was among the appraisers Saturday. She was delighted to see several examples of Acadian blankets come across her table. She also saw an LSU band uniform worn by former Louisiana Gov. Ruffin Pleasant when he was a student in the 1890s. Interestingly, Pleasant also played on the LSU football team, and switched into his band uniform at halftime.

Auerbach says those kinds of stories resonate the most with producers and keep them from worrying that a certain stop on the tour might be a snooze fest. “The only way we’ve known that we’re going to have some good finds is because we’ve always been able to,” she says.

The 18th season airs on PBS in January 2014, and Baton Rouge will be featured in three episodes. Find out more about the show here. Below, check out some interesting things we learned during the taping.

What doesn’t get appraised:
Currency and stamps. You can Google that yourself.

Louisiana is packing heat:
Police and security at the firearm check-in saw more than 300 antique firearms and examined them to make sure each wasn’t loaded.

Attendees come prepared:
Many had makeshift carts and dollies for pulling around larger items. Some even brought lawn chairs for the lines.

Weirdest item we saw:
A mannequin head atop a four-foot-tall white stand that spread out like a tree trunk at the bottom—it’s hard to describe but we think it was some type of terrifying hat rack.

Don’t touch!
Employees and volunteers are not allowed to help you carry in items or hold them for you. That rule can come in handy: “When we hear something shatter, at least we know it’s not a Roadshow employee,” Auerbach says, though she notes it doesn’t happen often.

Host Mark L. Walberg keeps it fun:
The host snuck up on Auerbach several times during our visit to joke with her and also insisted on firing a cannon at Port Hudson during the location taping, something the producers reluctantly agreed to allow.

Not impressed:
The appraisers will see 68,000 attendees during the summer tour, besides the items they appraise on their own time. To say they are hard to impress is putting it lightly. “These people do five-to-six figure appraisals every week,” Auerbach says.

Camera ready:
When an attendee is selected for taping, they are brought to a green room where they are prepped and maybe even get their face powdered for the camera. Meanwhile, appraisers are busy in a research room finding out all they can about the particular item. Producers try to keep the attendees sequestered until they meet the appraisers so they can’t gather any information, overheard or otherwise, about their piece until the actual taping. “What we want is that whole moment [the attendee’s real-time reaction] to be completely documented,” Auerbach says.

Just in case:
A medic is present at the event, on the off chance that heavy French armoire happens to topple over on a guest.

Baton Rouge standouts:
The local taping saw the show’s highest-valued web appraisal ever: a nude oil painting by Grigory Gluckmann appraised at $100,000. Also notable were a collection of Rembrandt and Whistler paintings valued at $100,000, and a diamond ring purchased for $30 and thought to be a fake that’s actually worth $25,000-$30,000, likely made in France in the 1920s.

How did we do?
Members of the press were allowed to bring one item each for a quick appraisal. Brandi Simmons, 225’s online operations director, got a German viewfinder with its case and photos appraised for $300-$400. Lindsey Holland of our sister publication inRegister had a hock bracelet from her aunt’s days in the circus (for real!) appraised for $3,000-$4,000. And me? A dagger a relative brought back from the Vietnam War turned out to be a souvenir item worth only $35-$50. As anyone who has seen the show knows, not everyone can be a winner.