{"id":2423,"date":"2010-02-22T08:59:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T15:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=2423"},"modified":"2010-02-22T08:59:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T15:59:23","slug":"valuable-appraiser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=2423","title":{"rendered":"Valuable Appraiser"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"david
David Rago, pictured with his wife Suzanne Perrault and their cat Michelle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s June 26, 2004, and David Rago<\/strong> is standing beside a woman in a crowded Saint Paul, MN, convention center. Between them is a dark wooden chair without a seat or cushion. To an untrained eye, it looks elegant yet sturdy\u2014not too different from most higher-end dining chairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my sister\u2019s chair,\u201d the woman explains. \u201cShe purchased it from some friends of mine in the late \u201970s. [Years later], she was looking at an Antique Trader<\/em> [magazine], noticed another chair in there called \u2018the lost treasure,\u2019 and realized maybe she had a treasure of her own.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story Rago has heard frequently as an appraiser on Antiques Roadshow<\/em>\u2014 a PBS series that sends specialists across the country to assign values to the nation\u2019s antiques and collectibles. Often, a man-on-the-street comes in with a family heirloom or flea market find and discovers it\u2019s very valuable. Or not.<\/p>\n

With one hand resting gently on the chair, Rago speaks quickly, his excitement palpable: the chair is an early one by famed furniture maker Gustav Stickley. He traces its origins to the turn of the 20th century, concluding that \u201ctoday\u2019s market [value] for this chair is $40,000 to $50,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my word,\u201d the woman says, grinning. \u201cThat\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awesome, yes, but all in a day\u2019s work for Rago, who specializes in American and European 20th-century decorative arts and furnishings, and frequently handles items valued at five or more digits.<\/p>\n

But despite his success in the field\u2014including appearances on a hit TV show and a flourishing arts and auction center in Lambertville, NJ\u2014 there\u2019s one prized item Rago\u2019s still hoping to get his hands on: a BA from The College of New Jersey.<\/p>\n

As a teenager looking to earn money for college, Rago began selling American decorative ceramics at flea markets near his Hamilton, NJ, home. He\u2019d scour his neighbors\u2019 basements and attics for items that caught his eye, then keep a third of what he sold them for as payment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the first time I saw a piece of American pottery\u201d\u2014a \u201cmediocre\u201d Roseville piece his parents had bought in Lambertville\u2014\u201cthat that was it for me,\u201d he says. \u201cI was very fortunate to be 16 and know what I was going to do with my life. It was also a way of being my own boss, paying for college, and having fun at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time he was a student here in the mid-1970s, Rago was working three jobs to pay for his education: night shifts at a grocery store, packing cooling units into cardboard boxes, and repairing bicycles. On the weekends, he made time for his true passion: flipping antiques.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Friday, I\u2019d work at the supermarket until midnight and drive from there to the Englishtown flea market, where I\u2019d set up by lantern,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI\u2019d stay there until 9 a.m., then attempt to drive home without falling asleep. I\u2019d work again Saturday evening, then go to the Lambertville flea market on Sunday morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon, he was working 70 hours a week on top of his class load, and it became clear something had to give\u2014that something was his senior year at TCNJ.<\/p>\n

Within the year, Rago expanded his business from selling his neighbors\u2019 old possessions to running antiques up, down, and across the East Coast. \u201cI\u2019d get in my van and drive from D.C. to Boston and as far west as Chicago to meet clients, pick things up, and then sell them privately,\u201d he says. \u201cI was a middleman\u2014a source of ceramics for a number of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He still remembers one of his early, exhilarating finds: a piece of Owens Pottery from Ohio made in 1905. When a friend in Massachusetts sent him a Polaroid of the piece, Rago knew it was something special, and paid $1,000\u2014 $700 more than the original asking price\u2014to have the friend meet him halfway with it. He sold it the same night for $3,000.<\/p>\n

Rago is the first to point out that his do-it-yourself entr\u00e9e into American decorative ceramics came at just the right time: \u201cUp until 1970, it was very unusual for people to get into the business that way,\u201d he says. \u201cFor the most part, people were born into the business or they were art majors. After 1970, it became a little more democratic. You were as good as what you found.\u201d<\/p>\n

More importantly, American decorative ceramics wasn\u2019t yet a field of study, so the pieces were both available and affordable, allowing a hard-working teenager on a shoestring budget to transform a talent into a career.<\/p>\n

Following a two-year stint at the NYC-based Jordan-Volpe Gallery, Rago decided to start his own antique auction in 1983.\u00a0 \u201cIf I had any clue what I was getting into, I never would have done that,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cStarting an auction from scratch was more work than I thought possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he dedicated himself to it for the next few years, and \u201ceventually it started to work for us.\u201d In 1996 \u2014 the same year he became an on-camera appraiser for Antiques Roadshow<\/em> \u2014 Rago bought a building in Lambertville and moved all his auctions there. The Rago Arts and Auction Center, which specializes in 20th-century decorative art, currently hosts 12 to 14 auctions per year and boasts a client base of 40,000 collectors, dealers and interior designers.<\/p>\n

More than three decades after leaving campus to pursue his antiques career, Rago still prizes the years he spent at TCNJ, crediting his English professors with his writing ability and confidence. \u201cIn my business, not many people can write or speak publicly,\u201d he says. \u201cMost people have a fear of putting something down on paper. I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, he began publishing articles on decorative arts in 1975, and in 1978 \u2014 a year after he left TCNJ \u2014 he became an antiques columnist. Over the years, he\u2019s written more than 500 magazine and newspaper articles and five books, and his arts and auction house publishes two national magazines: Modernism<\/em> and Style 1900<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, he hopes to return to the campus where his career began: \u201cI\u2019m thinking of pursuing [a degree] in English or history or maybe computers or maybe all three [at TCNJ],\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d like to start with a BA and see how that works with my schedule. I don\u2019t want to do this half-heartedly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed’s note: Since publication of this article, David Rago has re-enrolled at the College and is working toward finishing his degree.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite his success in the antiques field\u2014including appearances on a hit TV show and ownership of a flourishing arts and auction center\u2014there\u2019s one prized item David Rago still hopes to get his hands on: a bachelor’s degree from TCNJ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":2425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-march-2010"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}