This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.
For the first time in its nearly 30 year run-time, “Antiques Roadshow” will be coming to Maine.
The show, which brings in thousands of guests to display their personal treasures and receive appraisals from experts, will be visiting the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay on Wednesday. Three episodes based on the visit are set to air next year.
It’s a wonder that the popular PBS show hasn’t visited the state before: Maine boasts a thriving antiques scene, with an abundance of old houses whose owners prefer decor of a similar vintage and with a rich history.
In fact, “Antiques Roadshow” Executive Producer Marsha Bemko said in an interview that for this year’s trip across the country, Mainers showed the second-highest interest in visiting the show, with more than 17,000 people applying for just 2,000 pairs of tickets.
Bemko said it was actually the need for a venue big enough to support the thousands of guests that prevented “Antiques Roadshow” from visiting Maine sooner.
“In the old days, before we would shoot at a place like Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, we shot in convention centers, and Maine did not have one that could hold the show,” Bemko said. “So for a long time, it wasn’t in our consideration list. Now, with a place like the botanical gardens, there is a place we can do it.”
Bemko added that around 3,000 people will be at the botanical gardens on Wednesday. Katie Hey, a spokesperson for the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, said the venue can handle the volume, as it sometimes sees 4,000 to 5,000 visitors in one day. If there’s rain, the show may have to be filmed inside or under cover.
The show’s team has been preparing for this visit for years, Bemko said. First, the advance team looked for venues that could accommodate the number of guests on the show, the 120 volunteers and the crew. Hey said the television show representatives first reached out to the gardens to begin organizing the visit two years ago.
For the last few months, botanical gardens volunteers and staff have been discussing logistics, and will have 20 volunteers and staff members on Wednesday supporting the event by helping with parking and other site-specific tasks.
The “Antiques Roadshow” crew will arrive in Boothbay on Monday, spend Tuesday setting up, and after filming, will depart by Wednesday night.
“By the time we walk out on Wednesday night, you won’t be able to tell we were there,” Bemko said. “Other than maybe full trash cans or something.”
For its first visit in Maine, Bemko said she hopes to see some good, old-fashioned New England items, like Maine fire buckets — leather buckets that Maine fire departments used before the early 1800s to lug water for extinguishing blazes.
Mostly, though, she wants to see items that people have held in their family for generations. She said the best items she’s seen in her 25 to 30 years on the show are the ones that have stories, such as a silver cup brought in by a Jewish family that was the only item in their family that survived the Holocaust.
Hey said the fact that the show will bring visitors to the Boothbay region and showcase the midcoast on television will hopefully bring more attention and revenue to the small town.
“Being able to showcase this wonderful jewel in the midcoast that is our gardens, I think, is very special,” Hey said. “So of course, the revenue that’s going to be generated by folks staying in hotels and coming to restaurants and coming to stores in Boothbay, we feel really lucky to be able to share that with our town.”
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
