Antiques Discovery Day

Sunday, July 30, 1-5pm

Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center

$10 for one item, $25 for three items

Have you ever wondered what your grandmother’s favorite porcelain vase is worth?  Your Uncle Fred’s Civil War memorabilia?  That oil painting that you bought at a thrift shop that seems an original and is signed?  A basket that was supposed to have been traded to your third-great-grandfather by a Cherokee Indian? On and on.  Many people have inherited or purchased items that they would love to have identified and informally appraised.

The Virginia Highlands Festival, in conjunction with the William King Museum of Art, will conduct an Antiques Discovery Day at which a panel of regional antiques experts will try to identify your family “treasures” and give you an informal appraisal of their worth.

The event will be held on Sunday, July 30, from 1-5pm at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon.

The cost for the identification and appraisal of one item is $10, or three items for $25.  Tickets will be available at the door. However, if you wish to reserve a time slot, you can buy tickets online at vahighlandsfestival.org for 1:00pm , 2:00pm, 3:00pm and 4:00pm times.

Please do not bring firearms. If you want a piece of furniture identified or appraised, take several cell phone photographs of the piece from all angles, and bring your phone to the event.

The appraisers will be John Case and his associates from Case Auctions of Knoxville,Tennessee, as well as his brother David and mother Mary Jo Case of Anchor Antiques from Kingsport, Tennessee. 

Betsy White, the Executive Director of the William King Museum of Art will be at the event to document Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee furniture, textiles, and decorative arts for the museum’s Cultural Heritage Project archive.