GUEST: My mother had two bishops... (chuckling): ...as her grandfathers, and their children went to China as missionaries around the turn of the last century.

They s, s, married and set up a household in China.

Every day, my grandmother and her sister walked to the market and they passed a Chinese antiquities dealer.

They wanted a Ming vase, and we are told this is a Ming vase, reportedly.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: And after about five or six years, they wore the gentleman down, and they bought their Ming vase.

APPRAISER: How long have you lived with this?

GUEST: About 25 years-- I inherited it in 1999.

APPRAISER: Okay, about the turn... What city were they in?

GUEST: They were in Shanghai.

This was probably purchased in about 1920.

APPRAISER: It's kind of a pear shape.

In the bulbous part of the body, there's a mask, and that's called a taotie mask, T-A-O-T-I-E.

So, it's liter, literally, a monster mask and that's something that was characteristic of ancient Chinese bronze ritual vessels.

When I say ancient, we're talking about archaic vessels from a very early period of time, roughly around 1000 B.C.

Around the neck, there is a very complicated design.

It's kind of a wave form.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: It's referencing ancient Chinese jade carvings.

And on the foot, you'll see this grid-like pattern.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Which is something that would have been seen on ancient Chinese ritual bronze vessels of a much earlier date than the Ming Dynasty.

It's a reasonable assumption to be able to say this is from the Ming Dynasty.

It's very possible, with additional research, that it might be something that we could actually push back to an earlier date.

On the inside here... GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...on the wall, what do you see?

GUEST: It looks like it's been repaired.

It looks like a break mark in the surface.

APPRAISER: It does.

And then, as I turn this, on the outside, it's a jagged patch.

If I violently knocked this off, and it fell onto a stone floor, and it happened to have a handle that was a curved handle... GUEST: Oh, God.

APPRAISER: ...starting here.

GUEST: It knocked the handle off.

APPRAISER: One would expect at auction this to realize somewhere in the $5,000 to $8,000 range.

GUEST: Okay-- that's what my wife said.

So there you go.

APPRAISER: So... GUEST: It wasn't my $50,000 that I wanted.

Well, that's wonderful-- it's excellent.