Check box carefully (07/09/2008)

Anyone who has ever watched "Antiques Roadshow" has indulged in the fantasy.

You know the one I'm talking about, the one where that odd item found in the attic turns out to be priceless.

Terri Eldridge knows how that feels.

Last week, for a few hours at least, she found herself living it.

The phone call came about 4 p.m.

I was working in Mike Snyder's office, filling in for him while he took a much-deserved vacation with his daughters.

Terri Eldridge was on the line, and she had one of those stories that reporters sometimes have land in their laps.

She'd been cleaning up some things at her mother's house after her mother's death. And mixed in with several other things, she'd found an old pizza box that had been saved for some reason. Inside it was an old newspaper.

At this point, I started rehearsing my speech on how difficult it is to set a value on old newspapers. Even those that have historic interest - say a D-Day extra of The Commercial Review - aren't particularly valuable. They're cool, and they're definitely worth preserving. But if you find one, don't expect to get rich. You'll probably spend more on getting an old newspaper properly backed with acid-free paper and framed than it will ever be worth.

But Terri's call was different.

Her old newspaper was accompanied by a letter of appraisal. And the letter itself was dated 1924.

The date on the newspaper was Jan. 4, 1800.

Now, she had my interest.

If the old newspaper had some value in 1924, it ought to have some today.

She gave me the name of the appraisers - the Rosenbach Company - and I started Googling as we talked.

The Rosenbach Company, I learned, was a dealer in old books and manuscripts, one of the best of its kind in the first half of the last century. In fact, there's a Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia housing its collection of valuable manuscripts.

It looked as if we might be onto something.

We kept talking, and I kept Googling.

Terri gave me the name of the newspaper: The Ulster County Gazette.

A Google link sent me to a web page that said, "January 4, 1800 reprints mistaken as originals."

I told Terri, and both of us were disappointed. But I read on.

It seems that the original newspaper was published with an account of the death of George Washington. Trouble is, in 1825 on the 25th anniversary of his death a bunch of reprints appeared. In 1850, on the 50th anniversary of Washington's death, another bunch of reprints appeared. Then in 1876, in the American Centennial celebration, another bunch of reprints had appeared. Then in 1900, on the centenary of Washington's death, still more appeared. Even more may have been reprinted on the nation's sesquicentennial in 1926.

So, millions of reprints are in existence. But there should be a few of the originals around too, right?

I checked the article for details.

As I read them, Terri checked her copy. The name of the newspaper should be in italic capitals, I said.

That's right, said Terri.

There should be no comma in the second line of the heading that says, "Published at the Kingston (Ulster County)" after the word "County."

There is no comma, said Terri.

At that point, we'd ridden the "Antiques Roadshow" rollercoaster from curiosity to thrill to despair and back to possibility.

Could it be that with a million reprints in existence and only two known originals that Terri Eldridge had a third original found in a pizza box in her mother's estate?

Stranger things have happened.

We signed off on the phone call after I'd given Terri a few phone numbers to call if she wanted to try an appraisal, and we both said we'd do more research.

Actually, at that point, I think we were both a little dizzy.

Later, I returned to the hunt. So did Terri.

And we both found the same thing.

The American Antiquarian Society, which has been dealing with copies of the Jan. 4, 1800 Ulster County Gazette for a long, long time, has come up with an easy way to check for an original. The first line of the fourth column on page one must read, "command the town, and not withstanding" or it's a reprint.

I called Terri back and learned she had found out the same thing and that her copy didn't pass the test for an original.

Still, dating apparently from 1850, it's a find.

And it proves once again that it makes sense to check the contents of that pizza box before you take it to the trash.

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