GUEST: This is a cast-iron birdhouse.

I remember at my grandparents' house.

It was mounted on a post, um, out in their yard.

As a little kid, we would play and it was always there, birds around it.

APPRAISER: What is so cool about this is it's not just any house.

This is Clifton House.

And Clifton House is a house that still exists to this day in Roslyn Harbor, New York GUEST: Whoa APPRAISER: on Long Island.

APPRAISER: Clifton House is a Flemish, Gothic Revival-style home by architect Frederick Copley of New York, constructed in 1862 to 1863.

Just a few years later, in 1868, the Miller Iron Company in Providence, Rhode island made this model of Clifton House as a birdhouse.

It is stamped "patent 1868," and it is likely either made that year or very shortly thereafter.

The Miller Iron Company would have issued this birdhouse in plain cast-iron.

And so this was later painted by someone.

And this red roof with green detailing and white brick sides would have been an appropriate color scheme probably in the early 20th century when this entered your family's possession.

Clifton House, as it is today, is not painted in this color scheme And we don't know if it was ever painted this color scheme.

But this is such an important example of American Gothic Revival decorative art that examples of this have entered museum collections, including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City... GUEST: Whoa... Yeah.

APPRAISER: ...in their American Wing.

And examples have appeared at auction.

But none of them, except one example I have been able to find, have this, what I believe to be, original open work base that you have under the birdhouse, where this would then be mounted on a, a pole... GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: ...outside for a birdhouse.

GUEST: Right, right, right.

APPRAISER: The house is held together by a long central screw.

Here in the back, we see the top of it near the mark of the Miller Iron Company of Providence, Rhode Island.

We can see the occasional small, lacking element.

There's a small piece of this stair banister that's missing.

And a couple of lacking chimney pots, a couple of other very small lacking elements.

But overall, it's still in amazing condition considering its age.

I would advise you to insure it for... GUEST: (chuckling) Okay.

APPRAISER: $12,000.

GUEST: Wow.

Really?

I will definitely do that.

(chuckles) Because right now, it's just sitting at home on a shelf, you know, catching dust.

So that's awesome, yeah, unbelievable.

Always been a dream to be here, so that's awesome, thank you.