We do.

Hello, I'm Mark Walberg from Antiques Roadshow.

And our visit to Wichita was a huge success.

Thank you for that.

That's mine hands off.

It's incredible to finally see it all after watching it on TV and everything This exciting today.

I've never done this before and it's different.

Never seen anything like it.

You want me to pinch you?

Yeah.

Pinch me.

I love antiques.

This is a dream for me to get to come here.

Finally.

How are you, young man?

Doing good.

Any notes, anything I should do differently?

You know, to come here to Wichita is really, really nice.

And we have relatives, so is exciting for us to be in Wichita and to see the treasure hunt for dollars.

Okay, thumbs up.

Do we move on?

It's like summer camp for adults.

I have six weeks on the road with really smart and interesting people, and we work hard all year, which makes it all look easy.

I hope.

3,2... Im Mark Walberg saying hello to all my friends in Wichita and I know you.

I can't wait to see you.

Antiques Roadshow is one of the most popular programs on PBS, and it's easy to see why viewers get the chance to bet and wager on items they see.

And participants get the chance to see if their antique is really an undiscovered American heirloom.

The condition of this is unbelievable.

Are you a wealthy man, Ted?

No.

Well, sir, I'm still a little nervous here.

I have to tell you.

On a really bad day.

This textile would be worth $350,000.

On a good day, it's about a half a million dollars.

And you had no idea?

I had no idea.

I'm just laying on the back of a chair.

Well, sir, you have a national treasure.

Wow.

A national treasure.

She.

When you walked in with this, I just about died.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

I can't believe this.

Congratulations.

Wow.

Can't believe it.

As part of their 2008 summer tour, Antiques Roadshow paid a visit to Wichita, Kansas.

The summer tour included Palm Springs, Dallas, Chattanooga, Grand Rapids, Hartford and of course, Wichita.

They contacted us in November of ‘07.

We got a letter in the mail that said they had picked out their tour stops for the 08 summer tour, and Wichita was there.

That was the first that we'd heard of it.

We didn't we had never applied or sort of lobbied them to come to Wichita.

I wish I had and could take credit for it, but it was one of those things that just sort of popped out of nowhere.

And what a wonderful surprise.

And of course, then the reality hit and what do we have to do to get credit?

Why did Antiques Roadshow decide to visit Wichita?

The criteria includes two basic questions.

Well, the first is a very boring thing, but I have to tell you, it starts with does your city have a convention center that can hold our crowd?

We need about a hundred thousand square feet of space, and we have a separate area that divides our crowd, which is where we're standing from our city area.

Otherwise, you won't hear Antiques Roadshow.

And then the next question is, have we been to your city before?

And for Wichita, the answer is no.

So it's a new city with a convention center.

And here we are.

Antiques Roadshow is produced at member station WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts.

Marsha Bemko is the show's executive producer.

She travels to every city and oversees the production from start to finish.

She also recruits and oversees the manpower required to put on a production of this magnitude.

We take about 25 out of Boston, another 15 out of that we hire locally.

That, in addition to my 14 year round staff, plus people from KPTS who are helping us.

We've had them working with us in advance, and we have 110 volunteers, plus 75 appraisers.

Good sized group.

All in all, it takes over 250 people to produce PBS's highest rated series.

Almost 11 million viewers tune in to watch Antiques Roadshow every week.

However, this wasn't always the case.

The first show had 400 people.

600 people maybe came somewhere in there to the first show.

No one no one heard of the Antiques Roadshow, really in America much.

And we were waiting for one person to come in the door saying, yes, a person is coming in with a spoon, you know, and try to get a show out of that.

And we were getting in an hour, an hour long show out of that, and now look at it.

And then we did we did get a show it out of that first one.

That's right.

We did.

And then about a year and then aired.

I mean, I was in the background pretending I was like one of the guests because we had to fill up the space like, you know, when needed.

They were desperate for people in the background.

When the show started, and it was not an immediate hit, as in it was on all the time.

But people saw it and they called my mother up and they said, I saw Michael on TV.

I haven't seen him in 30 years.

He looks just like your husband.

My mother was like, No, no, he looks like my side of the family.

I knew there was a reason to keep doing work.

So I do road show because of the look on my mother's face.

Those looking to attend Antiques Roadshow usually apply through a lottery system for Wichita's visit.

People from all over Kansas and beyond applied, hoping to be a part of the show.

The response from the public.

Oh my gosh.

How?

It was amazing.

I mean, you know, I've been at KPTS for a couple of years.

And when you walk out in the community, people are always pleased to see you.

But once Antiques Road Show announced they were coming to Wichita.

It was unbelievable.

Everywhere you went and people knew that you were affiliated with the station.

They wanted to know about the road show.

And, oh, I've applied for my tickets.

I've applied for my tickets.

You got any pull?

Can you help me get tickets?

Friends calling out of the crawl, out of the woodwork, wanting to know.

Can you help me get tickets to this?

My wife's a big antique collector, and, you know, there really wasn't much of anything we could do for them.

But it was it was really exciting to see that energy and the local media, the newspaper, radio, TV stations, they all got excited, too, when when the announcement first came out, most of them ran stories about how, you know, PBS number one show and the sort of cultural icon was coming to Wichita.

And what that was going to mean for the city and really for the entire state.

It's exciting to be here.

I'm so happy that you guys are here in Wichita.

It is so exciting.

I, I wanted to come here so long.

I've applied for tickets a couple of different times, in different cities.

And I finally got it this year.

And if you think I wasn't going to come down, you're crazy.

Well, we come.

First of all, most of us are flying in on planes, except for the people driving the trucks.

So there are folks driving our mobile unit, which we have a technical truck filled with where the directors are directing what's happening with the cameras.

And then we have our grip and lighting truck, which is a huge semi, which all the things that are behind us and the entire set is in that.

By the way, the size of our set is driven by the fact that we can't carry a larger lighting truss.

We've got to be able to have the truss light the area that we're we're in.

So all of that is actually stacked to the roof from the truck into the door.

And if we put anything else in, we have to take something out.

It's cool.

KPTS worked with Antiques Roadshow to recruit over 100 local volunteers or roadies as they prefer to be called.

You know, for our events, we're a pretty small station 100 volunteers seems like a lot.

Within a couple of weeks of putting out the word that we needed, volunteers and it guaranteed you access to Antiques Roadshow.

We were turning people away and the volunteers that showed up on that Saturday morning were just wonderful.

They all had a great spirit.

They were excited to be there.

They were willing to do whatever you ask them to do.

It was that was as much fun for me to meet the volunteers and the people that were there as it was to sort of be a part of this television thing.

Are we being filmed?

We're going to get on there.

We love the Antiques Roadshow.

I landed around 4:00 and they took me straight here to the hotel.

And as soon as I pulled in, I looked across the river and saw Lawrence Dumont Stadium.

And my son's a big baseball player.

And so I dropped my luggage and as quickly as I could get there, I went.

It was double header.

So I caught the second game of the Wingnuts game.

We had a really good time.

People are really nice here.

I mean, I was, I came in at the airport.

Let's say you came in a little while ago.

Very and really, really nice and we have relatives here.

Yeah, that's right.

Our Aunt Gertrude is right here and a lot of relatives that I haven't, we haven't actually met because they're little ones.

So we're we're going to have dinner tonight with about ten blood relatives.

Well, that's right.

Because we have very little when they visited us.

Yeah.

So it is exciting for us to be in Wichita.

Obviously a real treasure hunt for the relatives we get to meet, you know, new relatives, old antiques.

Oh.

Well, the good news was that my plane didn't get canceled because a number of people came through Chicago and they're still there, a few of them.

So the good news is in the summer, bad weather.

I came through in one piece and it all went well.

With the big events set for Saturday, the Antiques Roadshow cast and crew got straight to work.

The set was erected Friday morning and field shoots took place throughout the afternoon.

The Kansas Aviation Museum was one of the area attractions profiled in the show.

Today with the Aviation Museum.

And that was great.

My son is a student pilot, so through him I've found an interest in aviation and here we are just in the heart of it.

So we looked at some aviation air travel posters showing the old Boeing 314 clipper and that was kind of cool.

And then the Continental, the TWA Connie, on one of them.

So it was really great.

It's very expensive.

Posters.

Not only did we have the appraisal event on Saturday, but we decided to have a preview party the night before.

On Friday night.

So this is an opportunity for a lot of people to meet what essentially are celebrities, the host, the appraisers.

They've all become celebrities because of their involvement in the show.

So not only did we have the appraisal event on Saturday, but we decided to have a preview party the night before on Friday night so people could purchase a ticket for this event.

Appraisers were there.

We we expected to maybe have four or five appraisers and the host and the producer there to, you know, just to mingle with folks.

As it turned out, we ended up having probably a dozen to maybe at one point there might have been 20 appraisers there because they were all staying at the Hyatt.

The event was in the Hyatt.

They just came down to the lobby to have a drink and meet people.

And so people really got their money's worth.

We gave them a tour of the set and, you know, they all kind of left with the anticipation and excitement of what's going to happen tomorrow at the real Roadshow.

I think a lot of people are ready to line up tomorrow and get an appraisal and very excited.

I've got two things I'm bringing in.

I cannot wait.

I'm curious to see one of them is something that my grandmother handed down.

And you just never know.

I don't know.

They might tell me it's worth ten bucks.

They might tell me it's worth $10,000.

I don't know.

And that's the fun of being part of the show.

And now we'll, you know, get a bite to eat and get to bed early and then we'll be at the hall probably around seven.

And I'll jump right into makeup.

The doors will open, it'll start, the whole thing starts, people will be lined up and we'll start praise appraisals and start coming along.

And then pretty soon thereafter we'll start shooting my stuff.

You know, all the opens and closes and throws to the different pieces that we've shot.

Do that up till about lunchtime.

We'll take a quick lunch break, give a crew break, and then we'll be off to do our rolling piece.

That's what we call it.

That's the thing you see.

And halfway through the show and we'll shoot that and that's a single camera shoot.

Takes us a while to do that.

And we'll have Arly Salka with us looking at some glass.

And I'll get a quick lesson on that.

And and then I'll probably do the crew heads back because they continue working.

I'll be done.

But I usually hang out anyway.

It is fun.

Antiques Roadshow Wichita begins with a bang Saturday morning as the first scheduled ticket holders walk through the door.

Volunteers are ready and waiting to assist attendees and guide them through the many lines they'll stand in throughout the day.

Ticket holders are allowed to bring two items to be appraised.

Almost anything goes as long as the items can fit through a standard door frame and attendees can carry, haul or tote them alone.

You know, I tell everybody who asked me, what should I bring to the roadshow?

I always say, Bring something you want to learn something about.

If you come with something that you want to learn something about, you're going to have a good time.

Because I may not make you a millionaire, you know, I may not make you feel like you're famous, but I can tell you something about what you own that you didn't know before you came.

And if you come with that level of expectation, be a great day.

We've been looking.

Forward to this for.

Three months and getting ready for and trying to carry.

The first of about.

200 pounds.

This is a bow My dad gave my sister.

Oh, I think he did some work for some people and they gave it to him.

She doesn't know much about it except for I mean, it's got lots of markings and everything on it, but exactly, you know, where it came from or how old it is, we don't know.

This is the Last Supper that.

Was hanging in the family farm where my dad grew up.

My dad is 81 and he said this was hanging there as long as he can remember.

And what interests me about it is I really think it's cheaply made.

I don't think it was any kind of an expensive product.

It's not even a wooden frame or anything.

So I've always kind of wondered if it was maybe even something they got for free with something, some kind of a premium or some kind of a because I can't imagine, you know, dirt poor farm family purchasing, you know, anything of value.

Our goal is to really when people bring pieces in and it may not be the lottery ticket, it may not be a masterpiece worth millions of dollars.

But we want to make sure they leave before they leave the convention center, that they have a smile on their face.

They they learn something about history.

We want to make sure they learn something about, you know, maybe what it's made of when it was made.

It's not always about the money.

And sometimes you get like these stories about your family.

You find out why maybe a relative is a little bit eccentric.

You know, a lady came in once with a armadillo shell with in the tail was wrapped over the top, all scaly to hold the to hold the basket.

It was a shell, you know, it was a banner basket.

It actually it was a bassinet, you know, carry baby.

But the claws were all hanging over the tops of the baby as the baby was inside.

The baby's like looking at these claws and the tail.

So I said, you know this, so who who is in this?

She said, Well, actually, my grandmother was.

And I said, How is she doing it?

She said, Actually, she's a little eccentric, very strange, you know, nice lady, but a little weird.

So I thought to myself, you know, how do you put a value on that?

There are close to 80 appraisers on the Antiques Roadshow set who see about 500 people an hour.

If the appraisers see an item they especially like, they'll pitch it to the show's producer to be featured on TV.

Considering the number of items brought in throughout the day, it's only a lucky few.

They can take their place on the TV appraisal table.

If you look at the numbers in that we get 5 to 6000 people, we get about 12 to 15000 objects.

A sitting less than 100 make TV and less than it's only a couple of hundred get pitched.

So I try and look at that a day of Roadshow as if I even talk to producers twice.

That's a lot.

Posters.

Where do we go?

Want me to pinch you?

Yeah.

Pinch me.

Like myself?

Take your blood pressure down to try and maintain it.

It's.

It's wonderful.

We were comparing stories about how nervous we were at home today and what we were so afraid we were going to forget something or do something wrong or whatever.

And sure enough, I got here.

I forgot to eat.

So luckily, the vendor was out there.

You saved my life.

This is from the early 20th century.

Probably 19 tens and twenties.

And that in that period it's a lithograph, which is a kind of print that where they each color separately.

It's very typical frame of that period, the style and everything.

Obviously, the subject is The Last Supper and that actually is what hurts its value.

Yeah.

And the reason is because religious art generally doesn't sell for a lot because there's so much of it.

I mean, if you think about the Bible, it's actually one of the least expensive, rare books because there's so many volumes and scarcity is often what drives price.

And the same with religious art because there's been from time prints were made, religious art has been in demand, which means that publishers have been making it.

So there's tens of thousands.

Of different prints like this.

And unless there's something about it, like it's by a great artist, you know, or something.

Like that or, you know.

Exquisitely done, they're just not going to have that much value because, you know, when you go out there and you can pick, you know, you got this one and this one, this one, this one, you can't raise the price much because they'll just pick this one, this one.

And this is so it's a really nice print.

It's an old.

Print.

The fact that came from your.

Family is what gives it its value, right?

Not that you go out and sell it for very much, but that makes it precious.

But I mean, on the market, you're probably looking at something that's maybe a $30 price.

I wouldn't even have thought that but what is the frame made out of?

That was probably gesso.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Which is what a lot of the frames they have or they have maybe a plaster base or a wood base because it's a wood base and then they could gesso on top.

And then they paint.

It.

Well, I was really excited to find out that he could tell me what type of a print like how it was made and especially what the frame was made out of because it didn't feel like wood to me, although it has a wood base.

But I didn't see how something that long ago could have been a classic, but it was.

Gesso.

Gesso and wood.

So that answer that question for me and I was excited that he knew immediately what era it was from, from the early 19th century was probably 1910 or 1920, which is absolutely, perfectly line with what I've been told, because my dad was born in ‘27 and he said he'd been at the farm as long as he can remember.

So it drives right with the family story and that was really exciting.

Hi, Mark Walberg saying hello to all my friends in Wichita and I know you have all been waiting to see Antiques Roadshow from Wichita.

And guess what the wait is over.

Watch this.

Well, my experience is a little different than what the appraisers experience is.

The morning I shoot all the stuff you see or hi, welcome to Antiques Roadshow and all that stuff.

And we do that with the crowd around us.

I love that part because doing the work with people around is fun for me as a chance to meet them.

They I get a kick out of them getting a kick out of meeting me and the appraisers.

I always have fun there.

And then later we'll go to a museum.

But if we get done in time, which we normally do, I usually come back and I just like to sit with the appraisers and sit at their tables and hop from table to table, watch this stuff come in and watch people's lives and people's stories and pretend like I know something, you know, stuff like that.

So I really enjoy the Saturdays.

By the end of the day, we're all exhausted, but you know, it's mostly because we're passionate about it and having a good time.

KPTS had a booth at the event and took photographs of attendees with their items free of charge Saturday morning.

The day of the Antiques Roadshow, we show up around 6:00 at Century II our KPTS booth is set up, although we're still sort of, you know, maneuvering things around to make sure that it looks the best that it possibly can.

We had put together an Antiques Roadshow KPTS background and had a digital camera there with a portable hard drive so we could take photographs of anybody who came out and wanted to have a little memento.

We took about 600 photographs that day and there were about 6000 people there, so not everybody had their photograph taken.

But a lot of folks there were two, three, four people in the photograph.

You know, one woman came along and she had she had actually dropped her antique while she was standing in line and it had broken.

And so she came up and, you know, we were out in the hallway sort of asking people, would you like us to take a picture?

And she said, Oh, well, I broke my item and oh, it's so my heart just about broke for this for this woman.

And I said, Well, would you like to take a picture?

She says, Yeah, that way I'll never forget this.

And so she took a picture.

She had this little vase in two parts in her hands, and we took the picture of her and she was just the sweetest woman.

And that's the way everybody was.

And in the end, over 6000 people attended Antiques Roadshow, Wichita, making it one of the highest attended shows in the 2008 summer tour.

The impact of Antiques Roadshow was huge.

It was it was big for KPTS, of course.

We carry the show on Monday nights.

So to have it come to town and have them come to town, they have people that have an opportunity that that was a huge opportunity not only for us, but for all all the fans of the show.

And we had people that were here from South Dakota and from Maine and Nebraska, but the majority of them came from Kansas right here, you know, within 100 miles of Wichita.

It did a lot for the city of Wichita in south central Kansas.

When this show airs, not only will you get to see people standing in line and having their tickets or having your items appraised, but you will also see some little pieces of the Wichita and South Central Kansas community, some of the collectors that maybe weren't at the roadshow.

You'll see a little bit of Wichita history as part of the broadcast during the during the 3 hours.

So it helps put Wichita on the map as the air capital, as a place where there are obviously an awful lot of of antique junkies.

And we're happy to be right in the middle of all of that.

But as far as I'm concerned, this is the best show, not just on PBS, but on television.

It's it's family.

It's a tangible connection to history.

And that's that's priceless for me.

I'm told by the folks from Antiques Roadshow that the ticket requests for this particular show was one of the highest number of responses that they'd ever received.

And the attendance that day of the show on July the 12th was, I think, about the second highest attendance that they'd ever had, regardless of the size of city.

So, you know, it was a big deal for Wichita and for the fans of Antiques Roadshow.

People are different wherever you go, everyone you talk to, objects are as unique as people.

And I and I've been doing the show almost ten years.

I can't imagine getting tired of it.

I love it.

It's a great job.

No, you can't have it.

Being on the road with Antiques Roadshow is is a fun journey.

People usually welcome us with open arms, but not every city is fabulous.

But here in Wichita, it's just been just great, you know?

Just the vibe is great.

The hotel's great, food good.

Even today we went to this bar and grill just because that's where we were, we didn't know where to go.

And we did.

It was just this smoky saloon we walked in was, okay, we'll give you a shot.

Best club sandwich I ever had in my life and the nice people.

And they invited me to a party tomorrow night so I might go.