GUEST: This painting was hanging in my parents' home, and we gained it at home in 2012 and stuck it in the closet for four years.

(chuckles) The Kenai Peninsula had a 7.1. earthquake.

APPRAISER: Wow.

GUEST: And we had a set of moose horns hanging above our bed.

APPRAISER: (laughs) GUEST: And after the earthquake, we decided that... we're taking that down.

The painting came out of the closet, and we hung it up.

APPRAISER: So, did you know it was a Bob Ross painting when you put it into the closet?

GUEST: No, we did not.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: It was sometime after that, we see the signature, and we're like, "Wow, we got something here."

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

Bob Ross is a public television legend.

He taught so many people to not only to paint, but to enjoy painting.

He made it safe to make mistakes.

He was telling you, "Just, you know, do whatever you want."

GUEST: Mm.

APPRAISER: Paint a little happy tree or a little, you know, happy cloud.

GUEST: (chuckles) APPRAISER: And it was so refreshing, because the other painting teachers were trying to teach you formal painting.

This is an oil on canvas, and it's signed in the lower lefthand corner.

It says "Ross 79."

And it's painted with a technique we called wet on wet, and just add on layer on layer without letting it dry.

It allows you to make a painting really quickly, and as Bob Ross did on his show, under half an hour, he could have an, an complete painting.

It's been reported that Bob Ross painted over 30,000 paintings during his lifetime, which is a crazy number of paintings.

In 1983, he started doing his "Joy of Painting" TV show.

From that time forward, all the paintings he did were owned by the Bob Ross company.

All of his previous paintings are on... kind of on the open market.

We don't see them that often in the lower 48 states.

GUEST: Mm, okay.

APPRAISER: I would give an auction estimate for this painting of $15,000 to $20,000.

GUEST: Wow.

That is amazing.

That's incredible.

APPRAISER: $15,000 to $20,000 is a conservative estimate.

For particularly good ones-- which this is-- I could easily see it hitting $25,000, maybe even $30,000.

GUEST (softly): Wow.

APPRAISER: Yeah.

GUEST: That is... unbelievable.

APPRAISER: Isn't it crazy?

GUEST: That is crazy.