'Antiques Roadshow' attracts treasures for Savannah shoot

Editor’s note: Per “Antiques Roadshow” request, only first names of guests are cited in this article, except when full names were provided. The policy is meant to protect guests’ privacy.

SAVANNAH ― Ron knew the “Mona Lisa” that hangs in the hallway of his home isn’t the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece in the Louvre.

Yet, Ron’s grandfather, who bought it at an estate sale half a century ago, thought maybe the artwork was crafted by da Vinci himself. Per family research, the Italian master was known to dummy portraits of prospective subjects, known as cartoons, ahead of doing the real work.

And Ron’s version included details in the landscape background also found in “Mona Lisa” replicas from the 16th and 17th centuries — and suspected to be hidden beneath the too-fragile-to-clean varnish of the original “Mona Lisa” in Paris.

Ron and his wife set out to solve the mystery at an appraisal event for “Antiques Roadshow,” the long-running PBS television series. The show filmed three episodes for its 2026 season in April at the Georgia State Railroad Museum in Savannah.

Appraisers examined antiques from about 4,000 visitors in the daylong shoot, with 140 of the items selected as significant enough to warrant inclusion in those shows.

Ron’s “Mona Lisa” wasn’t among them.

Close inspection revealed the artwork to be a well-weathered print glued to an old canvas, with a value of $25 to $30.

“We won’t be on TV,” Ron said with a sigh and a chuckle. “Maybe the blooper reel.”

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ron’s experience mirrored those of others who carried, wheeled and even dragged family heirlooms and other would-be treasures to the event. Over its 30-year run, “Antiques Roadshow” has shown that there’s gold in them thar attics and curio cabinets. News of a coming taping is a call to charms.

Savannah, Georgia’s oldest city at 292 years and counting, has no shortage of artifacts. About 12,000 applicants — many from within an hour’s drive of the coastal city and each permitted to bring two items — sought tickets to the Savannah event.

Many left the taping site after learning their valuables are priceless only to them.

“People here are very nice,” said Nicholas D. Lowry, a New York City-based appraiser and viewers’ favorite. “When I tell them their family heirloom is worthless, they accept it with a smile and don’t yell at you.”

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Family lore put to the test

Lowry and 60-plus other appraisers busted many myths that afternoon.

A centuries-old muzzleloader said to have been used by an ancestor at the Battles of Lexington and Concord? The butt stock is too narrow and the barrel too short to be a Revolutionary War-era firearm. More likely, the gun was used for target shooting or perhaps hunting in the mid-1800s.

A glass figurine of a shapely woman with a hole in the top of her head, suspected to be a rare candle holder? Actually, the hole is a water receptacle, and the figurine is a Chia Pet-like trinket. Add water, and the figure grows a hula skirt around her middle.

Then, there was Ron’s “Mona Lisa.”

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Treasure, not trash

Not every gem turned out to be zirconium. The toy lamb Kayla toted under her arm drew many a snicker from other ticket holders. About the size of a hobby horse, she purchased the piece at a roadside yard sale for $5.

Appraiser Karen Keane recognized it as a stool by famed German furniture designer Hans-Peter Krafft. Value? $4,000.

“There’s a whole genre of charming animal pieces out there from the 1960s and 1970s,” said Keane, who is based in Boston. “They make people feel good, and they’re fun. It’s whimsy.”

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Personal treasures warmed the “Antiques Roadshow” scene as well. Sisters Stephanie and Lynda brought turn-of-the-20th-century playbills and posters bearing their grandmother’s photo and advertising vaudeville shows she starred in, including ones headlined by famed comedian John L. Sullivan.

The sisters were less interested in the appraisal amount than experts’ advice on where they could archive the documents. They have no other siblings or first cousins on their grandmother’s side of the family, and neither of them has children.

“When we’re gone, we don’t want our grandmother’s legacy to disappear with us,” said Stephanie, who donned a vaudeville-style feathered crown, similar to the one her grandmother wore in one of the posters.

It won’t. An appraiser provided them contacts for the American Vaudeville Museum at the University of Arizona.

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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‘Living time capsule’

The show stealers of the Savannah shoot might have been two other sisters, twins June Cordele and Becky Christo. Both worked as flight attendants in the 1970s based out of the Atlanta airport — June with Delta, Becky with Eastern — and kept their first uniforms, down to the scarves and caps.

The retirees came to the “Antiques Roadshow” in full flight dress and charmed the producers the same way they once did nervous passengers. The uniforms were valued at $1,500 to $2,000 each, but their sisterly banter was TV gold in the estimation of Marsha Bemko, the show’s executive producer.

“I want you just the way you are,” she told the twins. “You are a living time capsule.”

The episodes will air between January and March.