Antiques Roadshow Detours

Marsha: Uh oh. You got the look of the devil on your face.

Adam: I know…

Marsha: What's going on?

Adam: So these days when we find out something from our show is selling at auction, what's your visceral reaction?

Marsha: Actually, I'm excited.

Adam: I used to be like you, but last season–

Marsha: (laughs)

Adam: (laughs)

Marsha: That’s funny!

Adam: I used to be you, but last season we did an Elvis cardboard cutout. A standee that was just such a roller coaster and ultimately sold for less than what we appraised it for. So I'm a little filled with dread now.

Marsha: It could be like the Roadshow Jinx.

Adam: That's what I'm worried about, it makes me on edge.

Marsha: It's good for your soul to be a little bit on your toes, Adam.

Adam: You know what else puts me on edge?

Marsha: Well, I have a whole list of things, but I don't know if they should be on your podcast.

Marsha: (laughs)

Adam: (laughs)

Adam: The movie Jaws. Have you ever seen it?

Marsha: Oh yes I have because that's like a homegrown movie for us. We're from Massachusetts and that thing was shot up here.

Adam Narration: Yep. Martha's Vineyard, just down the coast from us. Glorious sun soaked and forever in the shadow of a great white shark. I went to ask the tourists there a question every Jaws fan has an answer to.

Adam: How old were you when you saw Jaws?

Tourist 1: Oh, shoot. Probably about eight.

Tourist 2: I was, I was 10.

Tourist 3: And I'm not even from the US but I, I love the Jaws movies.

Adam: Do you think that's an appropriate age to see Jaws?

Tourist 2: Not at all. Not at all.

Tourist 2: People changed vacation plans. I remember all this in the news, people wouldn't go to the beaches and one movie did that .

Tourist 3: Terrifying. And then the guy being eaten right here, on this other side of the bridge makes it like an impression forever.

Adam: Scared the ever loving beep outta me as a kid, and it still does. Do you remember anything Jaws related being on the show?

Marsha: Oh, I do. We had a Jaws poster and what else did we have?

Adam: The clapper board.

Marsha: Oh my God. The clapper board.

Adam: Guess what?

Marsha: They're selling it.

Adam: We got another sale.

Marsha: This is a good time to sell it because everybody's Jaws hot

Adam Narration: That's right. Jaws is back in the spotlight. 2025 marked 50 years since the film first drove people screaming from the water. This episode, I'm facing my fears, dipping my toes back into the auction pool with a clapperboard from the shoot that nearly broke. Steven Spielberg. Can it shake the Roadshow Jinx in the words of Jaw's

Adam Narration: Shark expert Matt Hooper. Better find out before it swims up and bites you in the ass. I'm Adam Monahan, and this is Antiques Roadshow. Detours. Today, Jaws versus the Jinx.

Adam Narration: They say in showbiz it's all about who you know. And sometimes those connections can land you with a piece of Hollywood history.

Appraisal - GUEST: This is a director's clapper from the production of Jaws. My dad actually worked on the production of the movie. He worked in transportation, so he drove some of the sets, some of the people

James Supp: It was pretty crazy. This lady brings into this clapper board and it's unlike any clapper board I'd ever seen.

Adam Narration: In 2021, James Supp was the Antiques Roadshow Collectibles appraiser who spoke with this clapper board's owner in front of our TV cameras in Middletown, Connecticut.

Appraisal - James Supp: JAWS from 1975 was the big summer blockbuster. The movie that put Steven Spielberg really on the map. It was the first major motion picture that was filmed on the open ocean, and it was a movie that made us all afraid to go back into the water.

Appraisal - James Supp: This is called a clapperboard or a slate, and it was used to synchronize the audio to the film.

Adam Narration: A clapper board is a typical prop you'll see when watching a movie or television show with a scene about a movie getting made. The little board, someone holds up and slaps together to make a sound shortly before the director shouts, “Action!”

Appraisal - James Supp: How did he end up with this particular clapper, though? Do you ever tell you any stories about that?

Appraisal - GUEST: Yeah, I mean, he was friendly with the camera crew and one of them gave it to him.

Appraisal - James Supp: Most clapperboards open and close like that. Well, with this particular one, what makes it special is it was spring loaded to open and close like the jaws of the shark.

Adam Narration: Not only that, this clapper board has teeth, a row of sharp painted white teeth along the top. So when the jaws are pulled apart, the clapper's mouth leers open before snapping shut.

Appraisal - James Supp: Each one's handmade, each one's slightly different, but they're exceedingly rare. No one knows exactly how many were made. They're estimated between four and six were made.

Adam Narration: So a clapperboard from one of the most influential movies of the 20th Century, Jaws. Ask any fan where it began and chances are it's a core memory for our two experts today. It started at a video store, a box with a shark on it, and a feeling they've never quite shaken.

Adam Narration: Here's Roadshow appraiser, James Supp.

James Supp: We were at the video store Zips in Tucson, Arizona, I was probably around. God, seven or eight years old.

John Campopiano: I saw Jaws way too young, six or seven years old.

Adam Narration: That's John Campopiano, a filmmaker, lifelong Jaws devotee, and an archivist for PBS's Frontline. He works just downstairs from me at GBH.

John Campopiano: My parents would rent the film for me almost every weekend. It just stuck with me.

James Supp: I remember going through the movie section and they had this shark poster on the wall. I'm like, Hey dad, let's watch that.

James Supp: Not gonna lie. It was more than a bit traumatizing.

Adam: I mean, it's crazy. I think Jaws was PG.

James Supp: Yeah. I mean, what! Who thought that was a good idea besides marketing?

Adam Narration: In Jaw's defense, the PG 13 rating did not exist in 1975. And the MPAA, which was in charge of the ratings, felt the gigantic shark. Eating people and attempting to eat people was not a corruptible violence for children. Describing it as nature's violence rather than man's violence against another man. Sure.

Adam Narration: But try telling that to a kid who loves movies, but also likes to swim on hot days.

Adam: I just remember being a kid like we had a summer house in Scituate Massachusetts, shout out the Irish Riviera. Every summer on TV, they would show Jaws so you'd just be petrified to go into the ocean for like weeks.

James Supp: I mean, I grew up in the desert. We didn't have to worry about sharks.  but good lord, swim lessons were canceled for the week, I'll tell you that much.

Adam Narration: As for our other Super Jaws fan, John Campopiano, he's a fellow Masshole whose parents indulged his Jaws fixation with a location tour around Martha's Vineyard.

John Campopiano: Stepping into this movie that I loved, it was a very powerful, visceral experience.

Dolores Borza: Across on the other side that was where the painter was with the long hair screaming, it's going in the pond. Shark, shark, shark!

Adam Narration: Which inspired me to take my own sightseeing tour of Martha's Vineyard with homegrown tours. Dolores Borza, AKA Didi,

Dolores Borza: One of our best is the ultimate Jawsome Jaws tour, which is also led by Jeffrey Vorhees, AKA Alex Kintner, the little redheaded kid on the yellow wrap.

Adam: No way!

Adam Narration: Growing up, this is the scene that freaked me out the most. Little 12-year-old Alex Kintner pleads with his matriarchal looking mother for just a bit more time to swim, and she begrudgingly agrees to give him 10 more minutes. Less than two minutes later, there's an unseen menace lurking beneath his dangling little kid limbs, paddling his yellow float in the ocean, the water of which becomes crimson red as he thrashes about whilst getting devoured, just yards offshore on what otherwise looks to be the nicest of sunny Massachusetts beach days.

Adam Narration: Poor, poor Alex. Nightmare fuel.

Dolores Borza: The second victim. Yep.

Adam: Oh my God.

Dolores Borza: He looks pretty good for being dead all these years.

Adam Narration: I'll say, but how did one film turn Martha's Vineyard into a movie Lover's Paradise? Back to John and James.

Adam Narration: Okay.

John Campopiano: Peter Benchley, the author wrote the book Jaws in 73 and it quickly rose the ranks to become a bestseller and Universal got the film rights. Jaws is really about a coastal New England community that a great white shark descends on during the height of tourist season, and it's up to three desperate characters to catch this shark,

Adam Narration: The oddball trio are newbie, chief of Police, Martin Brody, rich Ivy League Shark expert Matt Hooper and Salty Seadog Quint, a local fisherman and they have to do it fast. The town's council,

John Campopiano: don't want to close the beaches because they're thinking about lining their own pockets. For a horror movie, it's got a lot of humor in it.

James Supp: Prior to Jaws most big movie productions were released in the wintertime, and Jaws was the first true summer blockbuster. At the time, Jaws was a mid-budget film about $9 million, but it made its money back within 10 days. Which was unheard of.

Adam Narration: Jaws grossed over $260 million globally during its initial release and has since gone on to make over $490 million worldwide since 1975. Also...

Appraisal - James Supp: Jaws won three Academy Awards. It won, one for the original music score, for the audio, and one for editing. Unfortunately, Steven Spielberg was kind of bitter because he didn't get nominated for Best director. The production of Jaws was an amazing story in and of itself.

Adam Narration: And who better to tell that amazing story other than creature feature superfan and part-time abominable snowman, John Campopiano.

John Campopiano: I think I popped on a lot of people's radar GBH because of the Boston Yeti situation

Adam Narration: Yes. You heard that, right.

Adam: John, on his spare time, dresses up like an abominable snowman or a Yeti and roams the streets whenever we get a nice snowstorm in Boston.

John Campopiano: That's right. Yeah. You gotta pass the time somehow.

Adam Narration: Not only that, his other hobby is filmmaking, impressive guy.

John Campopiano: I'm the director and producer of a new documentary called The Farmer and the Shark, I've been referring to it as Jaws adjacent documentary.

Adam Narration: John's film looks back at the chaos of 1974 when a young Hollywood crew arrived on the island to make Jaws and quickly realized they were out of their depth

John Campopiano: dealing with local politics, currents, boats,

Adam Narration: because making a movie about a killer shark turned out to depend heavily on the people who actually knew those waters.

John Campopiano: There's a lot of unsung heroes that stepped up and really helped save that flailing production.

Adam Narration: One of them was local legend Craig Kingsbury.

John Campopiano: He was a stone mason. He was a town selectman, he was a fisherman, a whaler. He was barefoot year round.

Adam Narration: The production team quickly realized he might be exactly the person to help actor Robert Shaw shape the character of Quint and give the grizzled shark hunter his authentic salty flare.

John Campopiano: He brought so much to the table that they gave him a role, on camera. And so we're looking at the making of the film through the lens of Craig's life.

Adam Narration: So John really knows what it takes to put a film together, both as a director himself and through his forensic research into the making of Jaws.

John Campopiano: Of course now, the stories about how difficult the production was are almost as legendary as the film itself and the odds were against them not even finishing it.

John Campopiano: Steven Spielberg and Joe Alves, who was the production designer, felt that this should be shot on the real open ocean with a real mechanical shark.

James Supp: Which as any director can tell you, is not a good idea.

Adam Narration: appraiser. James Supp

James Supp: Use a set, use a water tank. Don't go on location to shoot movies. And, the production was an absolute fiasco.

Adam Narration: Because as John explains, there's some hardships that come with filming on the vineyard

John Campopiano: One of them was the weather. You've gotta imagine they've got all of these boats out on the water, anchored down, shots are ready to go, They're lit.

John Campopiano: and then the tide moves or a rain burst would come through and everything shifts.

Adam Narration: Plus. There were.

John Campopiano: Boats in the background, they would be out in the water making it look as though they were miles out to sea

Adam Narration: When really they were just floating around off the eastern tip of Martha's Vineyard on Chappaquiddick.

Adam Narration: On top of that, there were challenges back on shore too.

John Campopiano: A lot of sort of old school, Yankee, New England people that were not thrilled about a Hollywood production being in town.

Adam Narration: In Jaws, a killer shark threatens tourist season offscreen, locals feared the movie might too, Deedee recalls.

Dolores Borza: People saying, “oh yeah, sure. Great big shark, huh? They're coming here to go make some money. Big sharks gonna scare everyone.”

Adam Narration: So yeah, turns out Martha's Vineyard can be a difficult place to shoot a large scale summer Blockbuster. Huh, John?

John Campopiano: They got behind schedule. Had planned on being there in the spring and leaving before the summer tourists arrived, and that did not happen. They got over budget and ended up being there almost through the fall. The producers almost pulled the plug several times, because they were just not getting the shots. They were up against quite a bit.

Adam Narration: Another great contributor to the catastrophe was the shark itself.

James Supp: There are actually documentaries made about it saying the shark doesn't work, the shark's still broken.

Adam Narration: the 25 foot mechanical shark, nicknamed Bruce was supposed to play a significant role in the production, but constantly malfunctioned

James Supp: which actually worked out really well for the movie because Spielberg wasn't able to show the shark in its magnificence so they can only use little hints

Adam: The way they built that up of the shark being underwater and your little legs are dangling

James Supp: That really built up a hell of a lot of suspense. That, combined with John Williams, amazing simple score. It was just haunting to never see this creature that is the showcase of the movie until pretty much the end of the film.

Adam: It's just, yeah.

Adam: Terrifying. Terrifying

Adam Narration: turns out. A giant broken shark is perfect for sparking creative storytelling and for local kids on Martha's Vineyard. Tour Guide DeeDee grew up on the island.

Dolores Borza: they would bring in the shark with a cover over a big tarp. And try to be all quiet and hush hush. Eventually, kids would be swimming out there and climbing around on it and getting in trouble

Adam Narration: But for roadshow guest Mary's dad working in transportation on the film, driving props, crew and equipment across the island. That summer was a dream.

Mary : “yeah, I'm getting paid. I'm with my buddies, we rented a house and like we're just hanging out.”

Adam Narration: Mary shared some of her dad's stories during our TV appraisal.

Appraisal - GUEST: They had a blast. They used to actually fly the film over to Boston every day. And they would send out for like Chinese food or whatever they couldn't get on the island they were living it up.

Adam Narration: so great times and an incredible souvenir. The Jaws clapper board.

Appraisal - James Supp: do you have any idea? What kind of value we'd put on it?

Appraisal - GUEST: Not really.

Appraisal - James Supp: Well,

Appraisal - GUEST: hopefully a lot.

Appraisal - James Supp: Jaws being such an important cinematic masterpiece. It's worth quite a bit to collectors. If this was to come up at auction, I put an auction estimate of 25 to $35,000 on it.

Appraisal - GUEST: Wow. That's awesome.

Adam Narration: That is awesome, and I would hope this clapperboard lands big bucks at auction, but, I'm still sweating the Roadshow Jinx. After the break, we’ll find out if Jaws breaks us out of our sales slump or if we’ve been bitten again.

Adam Narration: The Jaws Clapperboard brought by Mary to our Antiques Roadshow, had a bit of a journey to get there.

Mary Little: This thing was in a box in our basement when I was growing up. So like we had a camcorder and I'd make goofy movies with my cousin and we would use it and say, action.

Adam: Oh, no way.

Adam: Like,

Mary Little: yeah, like nobody thought that it was like worth anything. It was just a cool thing we had.

Adam Narration: Mary's family moved houses and forgot all about the clapper. That is until her mom got sick.

Mary Little: She said, “you have to make sure to find that Jaws thing. It's definitely worth money.”

Adam Narration: But with all that was going on in their family, another year passed by.

Mary Little: we're like cleaning stuff out and I find half of it, I found the bottom half

Adam: Were you stressing out ?

Mary Little: Oh man. I mean, if it's not with it, where could it be? it's a clapper that doesn't clap. It's like useless.

Adam - Narration: 6 whole months later -

Mary Little: I screamed and my son was like three at the time, and he's like, what's wrong?

Mary Little: My husband's name is Ryan. I'm like, “Ryan, come here.: He thought something horrible was happening

Mary : We were like, Ugh.

Adam: Oh my God.

Mary : It was crazy.

Adam Narration: So in 2021, Mary was finally able to get her family's now complete clapperboard in front of James Supp on Antiques Roadshow for its first appraisal.

Mary Little: We went down to Connecticut. And we met James Sup, which was so cool.

James Supp: Back in 2021, I appraised that for 25 to $35,000,

Mary : We were psyched. It was very cool.

James Supp: Which we felt was kind of a low, but reasonable expectation.

Adam: And so did you hear anything else after our event?

James Supp: I know at some point the family reached out to me and asked me if I could appraise

James Supp: it ' and I said, yeah, I'd love to, and then I heard nothing for years until, going through all these auctions. I saw the Propstore was selling a Jaws clapperboard. And within an instant, I knew that's the one I'd seen.

Adam: It was like an old friend just popped up in front of you.

Mary : The auction company is called Prop Store,

Mary : They said 40 to 80.

Adam: So a pretty wide range, but it's kind of exciting 'cause it's more than the 25 to 35 that we put on it.

Mary : Yeah, exactly. We're like, great, let's hope for 80

Adam Narration: A new forty to eighty thousand dollar auction estimate. Well that raises the bar considerably. Last season’s Detours episode following the Elvis cardboard cutout which stumbled at auction began my fear of the Roadshow jinx and this new higher estimate just means there’s more room to fall. But there is reason to be optimistic...

James Supp: the time of the auction wasn't accidental. It was the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws,, was kind of a no-brainer.

Adam: so lots of, hoopla, lots of events, pageantry, pomp, and circumstances around the Jaws film.

Mary : So we waited till this summer, why wouldn't we cash in on this?

Adam Narration: But before the clapper board went up for auction, Mary received an offer via prop store that was hard to refuse.

Mary Little: They said that they had a buyer who was interested in buying a clapper board for somebody's birthday. I started Googling, what celebrities have a birthday in April Who loves Jaws?

Adam Narration: They were willing to put $75,000 on it straight up.

Mary Little: So we're like, oh, wow, okay. That's a lot of money.

Adam Narration: but Mary and her family had their heart set on going to auction.

Mary Little: We think that we can get a good amount of money for this. But let's just say if they'll pay a hundred thousand for it, we'll sell it.

Adam: That feels like a crazy gamble though.

Mary Little: Yeah, it was.,

Adam Narration: The mystery buyer declined, but would Mary be able to beat their offer at auction or will the Roadshow Jinx strike again

Adam: And so September, 2025, it happens. Were you watching online?

Mary : Oh yeah, it was a live auction.

Auctioneer: 2 3 from Jaws. A small number of Clapperboards believed to be as few as four were custom made for production that featured shark like teeth as homage to the film's antagonist.

Mary Little: I mean, we were like, who would pay this amount of money for this thing? But there were Star Wars pieces. There were other Jaws pieces. There were Indiana Jones pieces that went for hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars. We're like, oh no, “who's gonna be left to buy our thing?”

Auctioneer: This clapperboard originated from a teamster in the transportation department during production in Martha's Vineyard.

Mary : When our piece came up. It was. So stressful.

Auctioneer: Let's start the bidding on the slot folks with interest at $42,500 at $42,500. It's against you here in the room and against you on the phones

Mary : And it sort of stuck there for a minute, like no one was bidding and we were like, “oh, no.”

Auctioneer: 40 2005, the bid fair and final warning, 42 5 at 45,000.

Mary : They're going, going, going, gone at like 45. We're like, we messed up.

Adam Narration: Was turning down that mystery pre auction buyer going to turn it into a very expensive mistake.

Mary : But then all of a sudden a few bids came in.

Adam Narration: Phew.

Auctioneer: 50,000 is yours now. 55,000 splitting the bid at 57, but I do have to say 60 ahead of you, ahead of you now at 60,000. Not yours here in the room. Going once.

Mary : three times during the bidding they went to going, going, and then someone came in.

Adam: Oh my God, that's amazing. It's a hell of a drug.

Mary Little: Oh, totally.

Auctioneer: Come back to me now at 70,000 please.

Mary Little: Adrenaline pumping

Mary Little: You know, you want it to keep going up, but you're also like, this is a crazy amount of money.

Auctioneer: But now we have a new bidder coming in at 75,000.

Mary Little: Yes, yes.

Auctioneer: Do I hear 80 please? Last chance then we'll sell. Fair and final warning, then at 75,000.

Auctioneer: No regrets to all those who bid at home. All done. Sold at 75,000.

Mary : Yes. It was wild.

Adam Narration: With Mary and the buyer both paying a portion to the auction house

Mary : The ultimate sale price to the buyer was $94,500.

Adam: somebody out there paid $94,500 for your clapper board.

Mary : Yes.

Adam: That's insane.

Adam Narration: I ask James Supp what he makes of that crazy price.

James Supp: Given the confluence of circumstances that allowed this to sell during the 50th anniversary, I think it's unlikely that they could have done better.

Mary : I would love to know who they are.

Adam: I want it to be Steven Spielberg.

Mary : Well there's one that sold years ago, that was in a picture with him. So that sold for a lot of money and people guess that might have been him, which makes sense to me,

James Supp: there's a famous picture in the prop world, of Steven Spielberg holding a clapperboard just like this. The clapper board that Spielberg was photographed holding, sold for about $120,000. So having this happen 10 years later and not being one held by Spielberg, getting close to that number is pretty spectacular.

Adam: So do you have any plans of what you'll do with the money?

Mary : Yeah, mostly practical things. But we'll probably go on like a family vacation that we can say like, thank you jaws.

Adam Narration: Thank you from me too, Jaws, because now I'm able to report back to my boss, Marsha, that the Antiques Roadshow Jinx has officially been broken.

Adam: It sold for $75,000.

Marsha: Yes, baby. You gotta love it. Aha.

Adam: We killed that shark. There couldn't be another shark lurking at all. Every auction result's just gonna be fine.

Adam Narration: I asked Marsha what she would do if she found herself with a windfall of cash, like the one from the Clapperboard sale.

Marsha: I'd go to the beach even longer than I go now.

Adam: Oh,

Marsha:  I love the beach so much.

Adam: That's a good one.

Adam Narration: The Monahan family loves the beach too. Whether they love being dragged around to Jaw's filming locations by an overexcited dad is another question entirely.

Adam: So Alice, here we are, at a scenic Jaws filming site.

Alice: Yeah.

Adam: Do you recognize this?

Alice: No, 'cause I haven't watched it.

Adam Narration: Ah, feel the enthusiasm. It does beg the perennial question though.

Adam: When do you think I can show my daughter Jaws? She's 11.

Marsha: Oh. Not for a long, long time. If you want to take her swimming,

Alice: I've already seen a million jellyfish and that's enough to scare me.

Marsha: I think you gotta wait five years, till she's like a teenager and she's probably seen it anyway.

Adam: like 16 or something like that.

Marsha: Yeah,

Marsha: yeah, yeah.

Marsha: About 16, all that other stuff starts to happen. As a father, you wish didn't.

Adam: (laugh)

Marsha: (laugh)

Marsha: You can combine all that into one feisty talk.

Adam Narration: Antiques Roadshow Detours is a production of GBH in Boston and distributed by PRX. This episode was written and produced by Louise Morris, edited in a mix by Tyler Morrisette. Our assistant producer is Sarah Roach. Our senior producer is Ian Coss. And Devin Maverick Robbins is the Managing Producer podcast for GBH.

Adam Narration: Marsha Bemko is the executive producer of Antiques Roadshow Detours, and I'm your host and co-executive producer, Adam Monahan. Our theme music is “Once in a Century Storm” by Will Dailey from the album National Throat. Thank you all for listening. Have a good one.