Check Out Local Photographer on ‘Antiques Roadshow’

If you’ve ever watched “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS, you know there’s always that moment when the appraiser pauses before telling a guest the value of his or her antique.

Sometimes the item the person has brought onto the show is really interesting and worth lots of money. Other times, it’s a reproduction that isn’t worth much of anything.

Luckily for Temple Terrace photographer Tom Allison, the family record he took to the show ended up being appraised for about 23 times what he paid for it.

“It was just a lot of fun,” he said of the experience.

Allison has always been intrigued by old photographs, and he’s turned his fascination into a profession. He travels to antique stores, estate sales and flea markets all over the country to buy old photographs, particularly portraits. Then, he adds them to his online database and also works through ancestry.com to find people searching for their families’ images.

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He’s been collecting old photographs for more than 40 years and has more than 200,000.

“I just think it’s the history of them,” he said of what makes the images interesting. “You just look at these families. It’s just like you’re telling a story of someone’s life.”

And that’s exactly what the family record he took to “Antiques Roadshow” represented. The framed piece, with portraits of individual family members and drawings of scenes from a typical American life, belonged to the Hughes family and dates back to about 1865.

Allison bought it for $60 from an antique show in North Carolina in 2008. He’s a fan of “Antiques Roadshow,” and took it and two other pieces to a taping in South Carolina last June.

The appraiser, Daile Kaplan, vice president and director of Photographs for Swann Auction Galleries, chose the family record to appraise on the show. Allison said the show’s make-up crew got him ready to appear on camera.

During the segment, Kaplan told Allison that she could date the pieces by the different photographs that appear in it. There are carte de visite, French for “calling card,” photos as well as tintypes, which were introduced in the 1860s and 70s.

“But what’s unique about this is the condition, the fact that it is in its original frame, that it’s a marvelous example of pop photographica and vernacular photography,” she said on the show.

She estimated that in a gallery setting, the piece would be valued between $1,200 and $1,400. Allison thanked her, and the segment ended.

Allison said he’s glad to know the value of the framed record, but has no intention on capitalizing on the piece.

“I’m not going to sell it,” he said. “I just find it intriguing.”

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