GUEST: It was my father's.

And he died and he had six of these paintings.

And my stepmother gave one to each of his children.

APPRAISER: He had had them for how long, do you know, or...

GUEST: Oh, for as long as I remember.

Probably late '50s, early '60s.

APPRAISER: Yeah, do you know anything about who the artist is or anything, have you...

GUEST: I know his name is Cahoon.

APPRAISER: Okay.

Ralph Cahoon was a Cape Cod artist and known for these whimsical, nautical, 19th-century-inspired motifs, primarily with mermaids and sailors.

Some of them had hot air balloons.

He was born in 1910.

He died in 1982.

This is a mid-20th-century work.

This is a, uh, oil on masonite.

He lived on the Cape, uh, in Cotuit, I think, most of the time.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And after his death, his prices and, uh, recognition started to gain quite nicely.

This is basically the original frame.

I'm sure Ralph put it in this frame.

It's a Victorian frame, very typical of his work.

Nice, bright picture here.

We have a lot of the bells and whistles.

We have 13 mermaids; we have a sailing ship with sailors; and then we have an American flag.

And we're either in the, it looks like the Antarctic, but it could have been in the North Pole.

This is a nice, cool picture.

I was very excited when I saw it.

I lived on the Cape for a number of years and knew a lot of friends of his and heard a lot of stories about him over the years.

Sounded like a wonderful guy.

GUEST: Sense of humor.

APPRAISER: Oh, yeah.

GUEST: (chuckles) APPRAISER: Wonderful, folky, whimsical painting.

And I think a good auction estimate would be $30,000 to $50,000.

GUEST: Great.

Good price.

APPRAISER: (chuckles)