RICK: Hey, how's it going?
Good.
How are you? - Good.
What do we got here?
Well, this would be a Henry Roberts map.
It exhibits the discoveries made by the British
explorer Captain James Cook.
RICK: OK.
Captain Cook was a really remarkable guy.
Just imagine 1775.
I mean, these were explorers finding new things.
So Captain Cook went all around the world and documented
everything, came back with drawings of the crazy animals,
like platypuses and things like that.
Oh, yeah.
RICK: Which people thought had to be BS.
[BOTH LAUGH]
DYLAN: I'm here at the pawn shop today
to sell a 1785 James Cook discoveries chart.
My neighbor, he gifted the map to me.
He found the map in his attic when he was
running new electrical wire.
I'm asking $15,000.
RICK: This is really cool.
I really do love old maps like this.
Captain Cook, he was arguably one
of the first, like, scientific rockstars.
It was a huge problem about sailing back then.
It was really easy to figure out how north or south you were.
So basically, if you were going somewhere,
you would just go down to that latitude,
and just sail east or west.
And literally, sometimes you wouldn't know if it's 2,000
miles away or 100 miles away.
You just run into what you're going to.
But east and west is a different story.
So him and some other people in England
actually developed a system to figure out longitude.
I believe he was the first one to map Australia,
map New Zealand.
And he discovered the Sandwich Isles, which is Hawaii.
Yeah, the Sandwich Islands.
DYLAN: The names and spelling are interesting.
RICK: Yeah, that's another thing.
It really wasn't up till the 1700s
that there was a way to spell things.
As long as it sounded right, it was cool.
It fascinates me that they could have
this much detailed knowledge.
DYLAN: Yeah.
It's something to appreciate.
"From the 1785 edition."
So in 1784, a series of books came out with everywhere
he had been in the world.
And it described his voyages, had
some charts and maps in them.
There was three books and an atlas.
Of all those books, you have the coolest page of all the books.
[BOTH LAUGH]
It does have some condition issues.
This is absolutely terrible.
Someone glued this whole thing right here.
DYLAN: I know.
And this is a nasty little stain there.
But this was laid paper from 1780s.
The dates are right on the paper.
I just want to make sure it's a first edition.
So, I mean, it's really cool.
I'd like to have my buddy take a look at it.
I just want to make sure this is the map from those books.
All righty.
Not a problem.
MARK: Ooh.
RICK: Yes, we have "a general chart exhibiting
the discoveries made by Captain James Cook in his two
preceding voyages with the tracks of the ships
under his command."
MARK: Very nice.
Captain Cook was amazing.
He was the one who went around the world three times.
He was attempting to claim parts of the world for England,
places like New Albion here.
New Albion is California.
But this was England claiming that part of North America,
even though I don't think the Spanish would
have agreed at that point.
[LAUGHTER]
This is from the 1785 edition.
This map is one of the ones from the second printing
of the voyages.
There were three volumes that were the descriptive volumes,
and then an oversized volume that had the maps in them.
And this was the major map.
It's a wonderful chart.
It's often the one that people like.
But it's got some condition issues that are fairly major.
You've got some breakage at the fold.
You can see a lot of discoloration in here.
Um-- ugh.
This is bad.
The fact that somebody glued this label on here.
You'd want to have a conservator take a look at it,
and that's going to have some expense involved in it.
But it's a collectible map.
It's a beautiful piece.
Thanks, man.
I really appreciate it. - Not a problem.
- Thank you, sir. - Very interesting piece.
Thank you.
So how much you want for this thing?
Well, I'm asking 15,000.
OK, that number is, like, astronomical.
Just last year, the four-volume set--
Mm-hm.
The 1784 first edition with all the maps sold for 18,000.
OK.
But you have the coolest page out of all the books,
but there's just no way it would ever go for $15,000,
especially being so damaged.
I mean, completely restored, I could
probably get 2 grand out of it.
OK.
I'd give you, like, 400 bucks for it.
Whoa.
I mean, I'm definitely interested in getting
a good number for it.
You know, nothing around $400 I would take.
OK.
Well, shop around.
If you change your mind, come back and see me.
MARK: Not a problem. Thanks, Rick.
It's pretty good.
MARK: I was pretty surprised to hear the value of the map.
I was hoping to get $15,000 for this map,
but I guess the ship has sailed.