And it's not just Ebay junkies and Furby worshippers who are playing. Just when you forget why the government founded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along comes a program like "Antiques Roadshow" to remind you: the great masses of a functioning democracy need a reliable source of appraisals for their Chippendale furniture.

PBS's highest-rated weekly show brings a traveling group of collectibles experts from town to town, where contestants line up for hours to haul in Great Grandpa's infantry doodads, the family silverware and their Augustus Saint-Gaudens engravings for on-the-spot valuations. I say "contestants" because there's really nothing better to call them. Though it poses as an informational program, "Roadshow" is really the perfect game show for the public TV crowd. Participants aren't rewarded for dumb luck, as in a lottery, Daily Jumble-level word-sleuthing, as on "Wheel of Fortune," or autodidacticism, as on "Jeopardy!" They're rewarded for their Merchant-Ivorized good taste and their heritage. Whatever "Roadshow" teaches about crafts or history, above all it teaches, with hard numbers, the value of coming from good people.

Certainly there's plenty to learn here about turn-of-the-century carnival glass and Civil War letters (Iowans are worth more, owing to a dearth of literate Midwesterners in the 1800s). But the producers know what we really care about are the cash estimates, delivered with a Wink Martindale warm-up ("Nancy ... do you have any idea what this piece is worth?") as the contestants absorb their five-figure windfalls with tight-lipped smiles and reserved oh-my-goodnesses -- because, of course, our sort of people don't make unseemly displays like the plebeians on "The Price Is Right."

And that's why "Roadshow" is one of the most entertaining -- and, yes, addictive -- programs on TV: it appeals to our own basest materialism and yet lets us look down on that same materialism in its contestants. (Which also explains the fascination of the rare segments where experts detail, exhaustively, why an item is a fake, sometimes debunking generations-old family histories in the process.)

But if the economy's really spewing silver like a rigged slot machine, why are we pricing up our possessions as if we were wheelbarrow-pushers in Weimar Germany? Maybe it's actually a perverse result of that boom, or at least its hype. In New York magazine, Nathaniel Wice recently wrote about Wit Capital, an online broker that allows small investors to buy IPOs at the initial offering price (sometimes); he boasted about buying MarketWatch.com at $17 and flipping it at $97. At this juncture in history, folks can make 600 percent profits in a day not through work or particular insight but simply by having a broker or computer and a sufficient stake. Is this a strong economy? You betcha! If it weren't, there'd be a big pile of these folks' heads rotting in Battery Park right about now.

In a bad economy, everybody has an excuse not to get rich. But in a strong one, you can feel poor even if you're not. Every glance at the business section is a reproof, every minute not spent e-trading an opportunity loss. If only we had bought Amazon in 1997, we think -- if only we had bought Amazon in November. If only, if only. And so we start to see everything we have for its market value. If only Grandma hadn't bought such crappy furniture. If only I hadn't played with that original Boba Fett. Thus is born a new national pastime, a new favorite sport. And you'll never catch us bitching about the salaries of the players.
salon.com | June 1, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon