A former Wellesley resident appeared on the Antiques Roadshow TV show seeking an appraisal of two 19th century photographs of the moon, and learned the pair could fetch $4,000-$6,000 at auction. The show was filmed recently at the Maryland Zoo.

“Pretty good for a dumpster dive,” the appraiser said of the Lewis M. Rutherfurd lunar photographs from 1865.

(The segment on the photographs starts just before the 22-minute mark of the recording.)

The former Wellesley resident explained that “the town dump has a great recycling area” and she visited to find frames for some posters. When she got home and saw what was in the frames, she got them reframed with acid-free paper.

They’d been wrapped up in a closet since the mid-1980s, she said. The photos have never been hung by the owner, who didn’t want light to wreck them and didn’t have controlled humidity.

Aimee Pflieger of Sotheby’s said the photographs are “very rare” and were taken by Rutherfurd, “one of the greatest lunar photographers of his age.” The photographs would have been made “for fellow astronomers, for scientific use,” she said.

The give-and-take area at the Wellesley Recycling & Disposal Area re-opened earlier this month.

Hat tip to Bob Payne for bringing this to our attention.