Accustomed as we are to instant gratification, Americans will only stand in a really long line for one of two reasons. Some lines are necessary, like those leading to the counter at the DMV or crawling through customs at the airport. Others lead to something so exciting it's worth the wait, like a roller coaster, a traveling art exhibit, or a twelve-hour sale. Barring either of those conditions, lines in this country tend to match the attention spans and tempers of the people in them.

So I was surprised when I arrived in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, on a Saturday morning last summer. I had trekked six hours from home the night before with one goal in mind: to participate in a taping session for Antiques Roadshow. I knew the event would be popular—the show is PBS's highest-rated prime-time program, after all—and I had read on the Web site that 6,000 free tickets would be handed out to optimistic antique-toters. Even so, I figured there was no reason to head downtown right at 7:30, when ticket distribution began. "It's not like there's going to be a line around the block," I reasoned.

When I arrived at 8:00, there wasn't just a line around the block. The line wound around every block in downtown Des Moines. Well over 6,000 people were waiting to get into the convention center where the taping would take place. Some had come from as far away as Florida and Hawaii. Of the hopefuls, 2,000 had picked up their tickets the day before. The rest of us had to just hope we'd make it in.

Here's how the show works: A team of antiques appraisers sets up in an arena somewhere in the United States. Members of the public are invited to bring their heirlooms, flea-market finds, and other articles of interest to be evaluated. A camera crew catches the highlights, and producers edit the day's work down to a one-hour TV show. Sometimes a ten-hour day of taping will yield two hours of programming, but often each venue turns up only about 15 broadcast-worthy items.

The people standing in line in Des Moines knew those odds. They also knew that, if they were fortunate enough to get a ticket, they'd have to stand in line for at least four more hours inside the building just to get the chance to spend a few minutes with an appraiser. Yet none of them seemed bothered by this. Apparently, this line was either necessary, or the terminus sufficiently exciting, to propel them. I discovered that, in a way, it was both.

When Antiques Roadshow participants tell the stories of their items, the most common tale by far is that the pieces were handed down from grandparents or even earlier generations. That might be all the current owners know: a rough time-frame and a snatch of a family story. Sometimes people surmise that an item must be valuable, because Grandma kept it right there on the mantel or in another place of honor. So the item has a dual charm, containing a nugget of its own history and anchoring the stories of the family that grew up around it.

While Roadshow participants can only tell their own stories, the show's producers endeavor to make the program a link to the past, opening each show with some background on the visited town and turning every appraisal into a miniature history lesson. Participants and viewers learn about Chinese dynasties, ancient trade routes, artistic trends through the ages, and why a lot of eighteenth-century furniture from New York ended up in Canada (prominent Tory families took it with them when they fled post-Revolutionary America).

Like the show as a whole, this transfer of information has both educational and commercial value; those who do not learn from the appraisers' history lessons are doomed to buy forgeries and overpriced collectibles.

It's difficult to say how significant a role commercialism plays in the popularity of Roadshow. To be sure, the climax of each appraisal is the unveiling of the item's value, and most items that make it onto TV are worth several thousand dollars. But if the people bringing the antiques were really interested in selling their treasures, they would have taken them to a shop, not a show. In fact, offering to buy or sell at item at a Roadshow taping is strictly prohibited. Viewers may be enticed by the idea of instant wealth, but the people waiting in line aren't there for the money.

One woman who had brought a fairly plain-looking Asian vase spoke for almost everyone there when she told me, "I don't care how much it's worth—I just want to know what it is!" She had found the vase in a shop in Okinawa several years ago, but she was sure it wasn't Japanese. I didn't catch the name of the island she thought the vase came from, but she said its culture had been all but wiped out during World War II. She liked the ugly vase because it was a piece of disappearing history, and she really wanted to find out about that piece of history before it was too late.

Not every Des Moines participant's "need to know" had quite so much historical or cultural significance, but they were definitely motivated by curiosity. In some ways, the entire day seemed geared toward building suspense. In every line, participants were inquisitive about one another's items, especially since most had been transported in unmarked packaging—laundry baskets, duct-taped cardboard boxes, suitcases, and old quilts.

Once inside the convention center, we were all herded into a switchback-style line that filled the entire floor. From the back, no one could even see what we were winding toward. Periodically someone would unveil an item, triggering an impromptu huddle. The only items we could all see, a pitchfork and a propeller that stuck up above the crowd, became the markers by which we gauged our progress. A flurry of whispers arose when my section of the line was getting close: "The fork's in. It won't be long now!" But in to what?

The appraisers themselves were separated from the crowd by tall, brightly colored partitions and banners. To pass into that promised land we had to split into six lines, each terminating at a checker who handed out tickets for our item. At this point we all had to bare our treasures, and it was funny to see what our more secretive neighbors had been hiding. These last tickets were color-coded and categorized: Books and Ephemera, Textiles, Glass, Pottery and so forth. With tickets in hand, we were ushered individually past the first partitions into a maze of tables, more banners, and, inevitably, more lines.

I was led by a Roadshow volunteer to the books line, which was unfortunately one of the longer ones. In front of me was a woman with a leather packet of World War II ration cards from Britain. Immediately behind me was a thirty something woman and her five-year-old son bearing badly damaged law books that had once been in a congressional library. Behind them was a pompous gentleman carrying an enormous book in an attache case. When someone begged to see his book, he unpacked a brass-clasped leather Bible that he said was hand-dated in 1682.

It was his family's Bible, so naturally he'd never sell it, even though an earlier appraisal had placed its value at over $150,000. Which made me wonder, if he was sure of its worth, why in the world had he lugged it to Des Moines?

I guess he was just there in hopes of getting on TV, but if so, he was the only person I met all day who even gave serious consideration to a possible PBS cameo. No, most of us had trudged to Des Moines because there was something we needed to know, and we hoped the wise appraisers (who reminded me of nothing so much as the Great and Powerful Oz) could satisfy our quest.

And my perseverance was rewarded. I found out that my 1936 copy of T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems really was signed by the author. The appraiser was sorry to tell me that Eliot signed a lot of books, and mine wasn't in perfect condition, so it was probably only worth about $100. But I was the happiest I'd been all day. "It's ok," I told the bespectacled man. "I was just curious."

Elesha Coffman is assistant editor at CHRISTIAN HISTORY magazine. For an expanded version of this article, go to www.ChristianityToday.com.

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