Reyne Hirsch spent 13 seasons as an on-air appraiser for Antiques Roadshow, and she co-owns the Patrick Jones Gallery in the Design District. Last June, she bought the nearby Dallas Auction Gallery and has introduced new categories to the 24-year-old auction house.
How often do you have to correct people that it’s “antiques dealer,” with an “s,” and not “antique dealer”? I like to pick my battles. I think my bigger correction is people calling things antiques when they’re not. The definition of antique is 100 years or older. A lot of people inherit things from their grandmother or their mother, and they immediately think that they’re antiques, and I have to explain to them, “Do you think they stopped shopping when they were 1 year old?”
You established streetwear as a new category at Dallas Auction Gallery. When you were appraising Tiffany glass on Antiques Roadshow years ago, did you ever think you’d be selling sneakers? No, I didn’t. We recently auctioned a pair of 1985 Air Jordan 1s for just under $12,000.
What was your most memorable appraisal on Antiques Roadshow? My most memorable one never made it to television. What makes good television is not somebody who walks up and says, “I have this Tiffany lamp appraised five years ago for $50,000. Can you tell me what it’s worth today?” That’s not interesting. There’s no element of surprise. There’s no storytelling. So I had a person who came up to me with a really beautiful vase made by a French artist from the art nouveau era named Émile Gallé. They had bought this piece 20-plus years ago. They knew what they had. The piece was made by Émile, but it was made for his sister. It had amazing provenance. Not just the fact that it was made for Émile’s sister, but also that it came from an important dealer. I think they paid, like, $30,000 for the vase, and I said that if it came on the market, it would be worth about a quarter million dollars. I wanted to take it on air because I wanted to talk more about provenance and how that can really play a big role in the value of something, but I ended up not doing it just because they knew the provenance behind it and they had paid a lot of money for it.