Jeff Chilton's family heirlooms are priceless to him, but he discovered on Monday that some of them aren't worth as much as he had hoped.

Chilton, 55, and his son Brandon, 22, both of Oxnard, waited for hours to get three Asian paintings and one small end table appraised at the Museum of Ventura County. All four items were inherited from Chilton's father. Altogether they were appraised at under $500.

"The one piece I didn't think was worth as much turned out to be worth more than the rest of them," said Chilton as he rewrapped his large paintings in towels and a blanket, carefully strapping them to a small hand truck and rolling them away.

The museum's Appraisal Day began at 10 a.m. and gave the public an opportunity to get an auction estimate of worth from experts with a famous auction house.

Bonhams & Butterfields, based in Los Angeles, provided specialists in the appraisal and sale of fine art, antiques and decorative artifacts. All proceeds will benefit museum programs, officials said.

The cost was $10 per item for guests and $5 for museum members, some of whom had attended the event in the past.

"There are people who come pretty much every year," said Linda Edison, a member of the museum's Fine Arts Committee, which helped organize the event. "We appear to have more people this year."

This was the museum's 10th Appraisal Day in the past 12 years, officials said. Experts included specialists in fine jewelry, prints and photographs, 20th-century furniture, books and manuscripts, and more.

Freda Hoy, 84, and her son Pat, 53, had two items appraised, and both were valued at $1,000 to $1,500 at auction.

"These have been sitting in the closet for years," said Hoy, of Ventura. "So I'm pleased with the results."

Hoy's framed print of a young woman in white, created by French printmaker Louis Icart, was consigned to the auction house within minutes of appraisal. She inherited the print from her mother in 1956, she said.

"They're just really popular decorative prints," said Morisa Rosenberg, Bonhams & Butterfields director of works on paper. "They were done mostly in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, with images of beautiful women."

Hundreds gathered at the museum with paintings, statues, books and more.

Lines formed in nearly every direction. Some participants stood while others sat on folding chairs in the packed courtyard, waiting for their numbers to be called.

Rumors of participants with extremely rare and valuable items circulated the courtyard.

One such rumor was of a woman with a first edition of the novel "Gone with the Wind."

"I don't know if the amount is as important to some people as (learning) if it were something rare or something important," Edison said. "Still, it's nice to know (an item's worth)."

As for Chilton, the table he thought was Vietnamese was really a 20th century Persian piece, and is worth more than he thought — about $300 at auction, said Angela Past, a specialist in 20th-century furniture and decorative arts.

Chilton's father acquired the wooden stand with ivory inlays and an engraved copper table some time in the 1950s.

"I'm pleased with the results, but I'm surprised that it's Persian," Chilton said.