Antiques Roadshow Makes Me Existential
The STUFF of value and legacy
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I have been existentially watching Antiques Roadshow a fair amount lately.
PBS’s synopsis of the show is, “part adventure, part history lesson, and part treasure hunt!” But really, it’s an opportunity to make all sorts of noises about the outrageous and/or disappointing value old objects have. My parents watch the show consistently and so, I did too when I was at their house for the holidays. Then, my Mom gave me their PBS login and I’ve continued on from there. Nothing like pure excitement over a PBS login to make you feel like definitely a middle-aged woman.
The large point of the show is for people to learn history around the objects, whether real or knock-offs. And the larger point of the show is for people to learn what the monetary value is of said objects. The whole thing can be pretty funny—watching people try to listen intently to the history lesson with dollar signs in their eyes, trying to hold their faces in a stoic manner when they hear the value. “Oh, that’s good to know.” is a common refrain. “Well, I had no idea.” “That man offered me $100 for it. You can’t have it for $100!!!” Things like that.
Overall, an enjoyable time. But as I mentioned, I have been watching the show existentially so I’m not here to recount the wide range of reactions over ceramics.
Watching the show, I have been thinking about value.
Not just monetary value. Although, I’m not daft; a lot of people just want to know if they can buy a boat or not. No, to me, the real crux of the show is the desire of people to have someone outside of themselves or their family see and understand the true value of their personal items. It’s about legacy. It’s kind of beautiful if you think about it. I’d be lying if I didn’t say the whole thing brings a few little tears to my eyes.
Most of the items brought in have likely not been seen by a wide swath people. They may have been stored in basements, hung on walls in dark hallways, displayed on dusty mantels, lost in attics, or even played with by kids. They may have been a lucky find at a garage sale or in a deep corner of a thrift store. Sure, some of the treasures may not actually be treasures per se. Some of the treasures may be more recently acquired by the person or family. But every person who brings something to Antiques Roadshow is wrestling with these questions of legacy and value.
There is only a small percentage of the population that is, has been, and will be “well known.” Very few people become household names or lauded as geniuses and reviled as villains…or all three at once. It’s luck of the draw, really. Right place, right time, right skill, right crime. When someone thinks about being “known,” I think that’s where their mind would most naturally go. We’re taught that you have to be famous, to be a hero, to have created something that endures for many years, to have a viable legacy. Otherwise, you’ll probably end up in a cemetery somewhere, where someone like me will take regular walks, reading your name off a headstone but not knowing anything about your personhood. That feels bleak but it is, you know, honest.
That’s why I think Antiques Roadshow is a good example for how the majority of us think about value and legacy. If being known is how all of us experience value and legacy, going on Antiques Roadshow doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It’s a show that is funded by viewers like you—but that doesn’t mean a ton of viewers are watching. A desire to get your 15 minutes of fame doesn’t bring people to the appraisal tables. Realistically, you could get 30 seconds of fame, at best and they know that. What brings people to the tables is a yearning for someone to look at the thing they have, a physical thing that embodies a whole history, and tell them it’s good that they have it. It is an important thing. It does, in fact, mean something to the world and not just to them. That is not something you can get from inside yourself. That is something that comes from outside of yourself.
A lot of the items you see on Antiques Roadshow will continue to have value to the people who brought them, their families and friends, future generations. If kept, and not monetarily valuable, they continue to hold a whole history in them—one that builds with each new owner of the item. If kept and they are monetarily valuable, they hold a history in them and a possible safety net. The same things are true if the items are sold, although the timeline is truncated. If sold right away, that item might, in fact, turn into an early retirement. Regardless of any of those options, to have a physical object appraised by another person does a lot to prove that you have something of worth—that you have worth in you and someone else sees it.
Of course, Antiques Roadshow is mostly filled with Boomers. Sometimes bewildered kids who ended up with a weird lamp from a relative but it’s mostly an older set of clientele. That’s because Boomers have stuff.
Yes, the next part is a lot of generalizations. Bear with me. Hopefully this is going somewhere.
On the whole, Boomers have stuff. They have wedding china and jewelry and tvs and technology. They have cars and houses and sometimes multiple houses. They take vacations. They have Roth IRAs and 401Ks. And there still is a pot of social security money for them. You know, stuff. So, it makes sense that the most common person to show up on Antiques Roadshow is a Boomer. They have stuff and so stuff becomes their legacy. It’s important for them to know the value because it’s the thing they can pass down to future generations. It’s the way they will be known. “Hey, you see this vase on the table by the front window? Grandpa got that backpacking through South America when he was young.”
Subsequent generations don’t have stuff. I certainly don’t have stuff. Deep in these days of unemployment, I lament the fact that I don’t have anything to sell. “Nothing I have is worth anything.” I keep saying. Us Millennials grew up with the examples of a generation who lived in an economic time that allowed them to invest in stuff. We grew up with the idea that that would be us too. We could do anything and we would get stuff. That has, largely, turned out to be untrue. Instead, we’re a generation that grew up with King Capitalism, on the edge of the internet and multiple economic downturns, among other things. For Christmas, we got the confusing task of trying to parse out what was real and what was virtual and what that meant for who was in our Top 8. We don’t have stuff. What we have for our legacies is work.
It’s a common refrain that Millennials don’t know how to relax. We don’t know how to slow down and disconnect from work. We monetize every hobby we’ve ever had. We bristle at the thought of being disappointments or having people be mad at us. We’re afraid that we’re burdens, financial and otherwise. (...just me?) We’re spending a lot of time in therapy trying to unravel all of the guilt because we only have work to be our legacies so what does it mean if we can’t get jobs, if we get laid off, if we have the “wrong” job, if we don’t want to work at all? What will we leave future generations?
Gen Z also doesn’t have stuff. But they grew up in the stark reality of only economic hardships. While I’m not Gen Z, it does seem like they understand that not only do they not have stuff but they also don’t have consistent access to employment…which is what you need to get stuff. There’s always discussion of how often Gen Z changes jobs (Millennials are often noted in this discussion as well) but it seems like they do because there is no stability where there once was. They know that. They also know that adults fucked things up bad. Sure, the rest of us know it too but we seem to have a much harder time reckoning with it. Partially because we are those adults who fucked things up bad. What Gen Z does have is a brand.
The speed with which terms are coined with the younger generations is staggering. The speed with which terms are reclaimed is often just as quick. Where once anything out of the norm was bad, now (it seems like) there is a term for anything you could like or be. They seem to spend a good amount of time making sure everyone knows they can be what they want, someone new everyday if they want, but there has to be joy in it. And you have to note loudly and immediately what your brand is. In terms of this discussion, this is their legacy: passing on the knowledge that there is something for everyone, you just need to have the right term to find it. They are using their legacy to teach us older folx as well.
Gen Alpha is still very young. The oldest are just about 10 or 11 now so time will tell what their—what they’ll need their—legacy to be. Having met so many of my friend’s kids, I have a feeling they will, at the very least, be clever and adaptable.
I suppose it’s no surprise that a $50,000 baseball jersey brought me to this place. As I am struggling for work, I’m thinking about legacy all the time. I’m thinking about my financial legacy and how it’s in a deficit right now. I’m worrying about what it means that I’ve spent a good portion of the last two years unemployed. (If you had told me that was going to be the case when I was a teenager, I would have laughed in your face.) Of course, I’m especially worried about my legacy as a playwright, as a writer in general. So many of these worries and thoughts require cooperation from outside forces. Or acknowledgement from outside forces. I can put my writing in the world and feel good about it but that’s only a small part of ensuring my words will have a legacy. I don’t have an Antiques Roadshow to go to where they’d say, “Wow, this play is worth a billion dollars! Look at you! I’m so pleased you brought it in today.” Well, that was probably grad school but I’ve been out of there for seven years. I probably need a new appraisal.
Value and legacy is a beautiful thing to contemplate, I think. It’s big, of course. Existential. Maybe feels like something impossible to actually contend with. But, honestly, most of us are probably considering it all the time in one way or another whether consciously or not. We leave a coffee date and hope that the person we met up with feels comforted by us. We send a gift to someone we may not see often in hopes that it will remind them of us. We give feedback and encouragement of budding talents. We tell stories. We lift moods with jokes. We write letters. We send texts. We take pictures. We take selfies. We document things on social media or in group chats or emails. We share work with friends. We send work out into the world. We show up. All of these things are what we do to add value to other people’s lives. They are valuable not because of what they actually are but because of the ripple effect that goes with them.
All of these things are part of the legacy. All of these things are, I guess, what the actual stuff is.
(But I’d still take $50,000 for a shirt.)