“The TV Appraiser Said It Was a Cheap Replica” — Jimmy Page Was Watching Off Camera D

October 22nd, 2019. Guildford, Surrey. The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, recording day for Heirlooms and Heritage series four. Heirlooms and Heritage had been running for four series on a regional network and had developed across those four series the specific grammar of the antiques appraisal format. The member of the public who arrived with an object they had been carrying for years, sometimes decades.

The expert who examined it on camera with the measured authority of someone who has done this many times. The reveal of value or provenance that was sometimes welcome and sometimes not. And the reaction shot that told the audience whether to feel happy or disappointed for the person standing in front of the camera.

Which was the emotional center of the format and the reason people watched it. The show filmed on location twice per series in country houses or civic buildings with appropriate atmosphere. And the specific quality of rooms that suggest things of value might reasonably appear in them. And had chosen the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre for this recording day.

Because the backstage areas were large enough to accommodate the production infrastructure and the exterior photographed well in October light. The recording day had 12 items scheduled across six hours with a break for lunch between the sixth and seventh items and a technical break before item nine that had run four minutes over.

Item nine was a guitar. Margaret Ellis was 68 years old and had driven from her home in Farnham with the guitar. In a case that her husband had made himself from plywood and foam in the late 1980s when the original hard case had finally given up its latches and its structural integrity after 20 years of use and could no longer be trusted to protect what was inside.

The homemade case had a handle made from a leather offcut and foam padding that Derek had cut to the exact interior dimensions of the guitar, which was the kind of care that a person takes with an object they consider worth protecting, and which Margaret had never had replaced because changing the case had felt, after Derek died, like changing something that did not need to be changed.

The guitar was a 1963 Gibson ES-335 in cherry finish, purchased by her husband Derek in London in 1964 from a music shop near Denmark Street that he had frequented as a young man. Derek had played guitar modestly, well enough to enjoy it, not well enough to have done much with it, and had kept the ES-335 for 40 years until he died in 2009, at which point Margaret had put it in the back of the wardrobe, where it had remained until her daughter, watching Antiques Roadshow on a Tuesday evening in March, had suggested that she should bring it in. Derek had also told Margaret on several occasions over 40 years that the guitar had been played by someone famous at a session in 1966. He had not been specific about who. He had said, “Someone who was around.” He had said, “The music shop had a connection to the recording community.”

He had said it the way people say things they believe but cannot document, which is with a slight diminution of the claim even as they make it, not quite asserting it, not quite dismissing it. Margaret had believed him in the way that you believe someone you have been married to for 37 years about something neither of you can verify, but that feels true.

She had not expected what happened next. This channel exists for the recording day and for the person watching off camera who knows more than the person on it. Subscribe and turn on notifications before we go any further. Graham Webb was 55 years old and had been appearing as an expert on heirlooms and heritage since the show’s second series, where he had established himself as the resident stringed instrument specialist and had become, across three series, the face that viewers associated with the specific category of objects that could be either genuinely important or carefully executed imitations. A category in which the distinction mattered enormously in value terms and in which the expert’s role was correspondingly significant. He was good on camera in the ways that matter for television. He spoke in complete sentences that edited cleanly. He maintained eye

contact with the object while describing it and eye contact with the person while delivering his assessment. And he had a quality of measured authority that the format required and that he had developed across 15 years of television appearances in various configurations. He had genuine expertise in stringed instruments.

He had been valuing guitars and violins for 20 years, had consulted for auction houses, had published in specialist journals, and his on-camera assessments were generally accurate and rarely successfully challenged in the letters and feedback that the show received. He was not infallible. Nobody who values objects for a living is infallible.

The question is what happens in the specific instances when the fallibility occurs, whether the correction arrives privately or publicly, and who delivers it. He looked at the E335 on the appraisal table. He looked at it for approximately 45 seconds. He turned it over. He looked at the headstock.

He opened the body cavity briefly. He played one chord. “Right,” he said, turning to camera. “So, what Margaret has brought in today is presented as a 1963 Gibson ES-335 in cherry finish. Now, the ES-335 is a genuinely iconic instrument, semi-hollow body construction, a landmark design from Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory.

And in genuine 1963 condition, the authentic article can command and quite significant values. Upward of 30, 40,000 pounds for a fine example.” He paused. “However, the headstock profile here is incorrect for the 1963 specification. The tuning machine buttons are replacement. The internal label is a reproduction, and while the cherry finish is period-correct in color, the nitrocellulose aging pattern doesn’t match what I’d expect from original factory finish.

What we have here, I’m afraid, is a well-executed replica, a copy. Not without value. Someone has put care into this, but not a genuine 1963 ES-335. I’d put it at approximately 200 pounds.” Margaret Ellis looked at the guitar. She had the expression of someone who has driven from Farnham with an object she has been thinking about for several months and has received a verdict that does not match what she came prepared to hear.

“Derek always said it was the real one,” she said quietly. Graham looked at her with the professional sympathy of someone who has delivered disappointing news many times. “I understand, and the guitar clearly meant a great deal to him. That value doesn’t change with the appraisal, but what I can say with confidence From the edge of the set, a voice said, “Could I look at it?” The floor manager, Claire, turned toward the voice.

She had been the one who had collected him from the production car park 40 minutes earlier after the call from the series producer. She had shown him to the green room and told him he would be invited onto set for item 12, the finale item the producer had specifically arranged, and that the run time before item 12 was approximately 2 and 1/2 hours.

He had been standing at the edge of the set for approximately 20 minutes, watching not the television recording in the way of someone observing a format they are unfamiliar with, but in the way of someone who has watched a great many things being assessed, and who has a specific quality of attention for the moment when the assessment is technically accomplished and factually incomplete simultaneously.

“Could I look at it?” he said again. He had long, silver-white hair and a dark coat. Graham looked at Claire. Claire looked at the series producer, Simon, in the gallery. Simon looked at the monitor showing the man at the edge of the set. He came out of the gallery. “Change of plan,” he said to Graham quietly.

“We’re going to bring our guest forward.” He looked at Margaret. “We have someone who has agreed to offer a second perspective on some of our items. Would you mind if he took a look?” Margaret said, “Of course.” He walked from the edge of the set to the appraisal table. He picked up the ES-335 and held it with the specific gravity of someone for whom the weight of each guitar is meaningful information.

He turned it over. He played one chord, not to demonstrate, but to listen. He looked at the headstock. He looked at the internal label through the F hole. He set it down. “The headstock profile,” he said. He said it to Graham, not to the camera. “1963 Gibson used a slightly broader profile than the surrounding years.

You’re right that this is narrower, but the narrower profile is also characteristic of the guitars Gibson made for the UK market through selected dealers in 1963 and 1964. Because the UK distribution agreement at the time involved instrument level variations that aren’t in the standard Gibson literature.

He picked up the guitar again. The internal label is period correct for UK market instruments, not for US domestic, which is why it reads differently from what you’d expect. He turned the guitar over. He looked at the aging pattern on the cherry finish. And the nitrocellulose pattern, if you look at the shoulder here.

He indicated the upper bout. That’s not artificial aging. That’s real oxidation in the specific pattern you get from a left-handed player’s forearm resting on the top. Derek, he looked at Margaret, was he left-handed? Margaret said he was. Are there moments when one specific question from the right person has changed everything? Tell me in the comments. I read every one.

There was a silence on the set of the kind that sets rarely produce in the middle of a recording. Graham Webb looked at the guitar. He looked at the man with the silver-white hair. He looked at the technical points, not the person, not the television moment, the specific points with the attention of someone who has expertise and has just been shown a gap in it.

The UK market specification, Graham said slowly. The distribution variant. It’s documented in the dealer correspondence from that period, the man said, if you know what to look for. He spent 8 minutes with the guitar. He answered Graham’s questions, and Graham asked them, which was the correct professional response, and the one that distinguished a specialist from someone who was merely performing expertise with the specific precision of someone who has not looked at these instruments for the first time today, and who knows the difference between a US domestic Gibson and a UK market Gibson from a period when that distinction was not academic but practical. He referenced specific dealer correspondence and specific technical variations at the volume and pace of a recording in progress. At the end of the 8 minutes, Graham sat back from the appraisal table with the expression of a specialist who has learned something and is in the process

of integrating it honestly, which is a specific kind of expression and one that is rarer than it should be. “I need to revise my assessment,” Graham said to camera. “The instrument Margaret has brought in appears to be a genuine 1963 Gibson ES-335, UK market specification, which accounts for the headstock variation and the internal label discrepancy.

In this condition, for a genuine UK market example, the value is significantly higher than my initial estimate. I’d revise to between 20 and 25,000 pounds.” Margaret Ellis looked at the guitar. She did not say anything for a moment. Then she said, “Derek always said it was the real one.” The man with the silver-white hair was introduced on camera 30 seconds later for item nine rather than item 12.

His name was stated for the record. The floor manager, Claire, said afterward it was the best moment of the series. Before he left for the green room, the man set a guitar pick on the appraisal table beside the ES-335, dark, worn to an asymmetric thinness on one side. “For the guitar,” he said to Margaret, “to go with it.

Margaret Ellis keeps both things. The guitar is in proper storage now, properly insured, properly documented. The pick is in the case that Derek made from plywood and foam in the late 1980s, in the compartment where Derek used to keep his own picks. It seemed like the right place. If this story found something in you, subscribe and turn on notifications.

This channel exists for the recording day and for the person watching off camera and for the left-handed player’s oxidation pattern on the upper bout. And for Derek always said it was the real one. What has turned out to be exactly what someone said it was, despite everyone telling them otherwise. Tell me below.

I read every single comment. Jimmy Page once said, “I was lucky enough to have been in a position to make recordings that will last.” In the backstage area of the Avon Arnott theater, watching a television recording, he had seen an appraisal that was technically accomplished and factually incomplete.

He had asked one question, was Derek left-handed? And the answer had changed what a guitar was worth and what 40 years of a man saying it was the real one turned out to mean. It was the real one. It always was. See you in the next one.