Appraise be!

Leigh (below left) and Leslie Keno, the effusive blond collecting twins from the PBS hit ''Antiques Roadshow," were in town recently to celebrate the TV show's 10th season.Hours before their appraisal-fest at the Seaport Hotel, we caught up with them by phoneto chat about antiques, collecting, and their secret rock music history.

JOANNA WEISS

What's the best antique you've ever found from Boston?

Leslie: A retired schoolteacher found a yard-sale table for $25: a rare Boston-made Seymour card table, appraised for $200,000 to $300,000. It was sold at auction in 1998 for $543,000. Not bad for a $25 yard-sale find.

Leigh: The ''Roadshow" 's been like that year after year. It's made antiques, in a way, exciting, and -- I was going to use the word ''sexy," but this is PBS.

When you were 12-year-olds, you were collecting salt-glazed pottery. What did the other kids say?

Leigh: We had bands. We had rock bands from about 14, I think. We loved football and basketball. So we had two different worlds, didn't we, Les? Once we had a buddy in a rock band -- we said come to [an antiques] show with us. He got a kick out of it. And he never came back. He wanted a guitar. We were looking for stoneware and wrought iron handles

Whoa. Rock bands? What did you play?

Leslie: We did a number of David Bowie songs.

Leigh: A little bit of Marshall Tucker and the Allman Brothers. We never played Bryan Ferry Roxy Music, but we listened to him a lot.

What were the names of your bands? Leigh: They sound bit corny today, I'll tell you. We had one called Stormy Creek. [Laughs]. We had another, Wisteria. Our dad was a high school art teacher. He [made] posters of this Tiffany lamp that said Wisteria. I'm sure no one had any idea what that was.

Are kids still into collecting today?

Leigh: A prominent boys' school asked us to come in and speak to their preschoolers.

Leslie: It was actually kindergarten and third-graders. We went around the room [asking who collected], and every hand went up.

Leigh: Everything from seashells to stones. One boy said squids.

Leslie: Wine corks. We said, ''Yeah, we have to talk to your parents about this.''

You were both awarded the National Humanities Medal last year. Did you meet President Bush?

Leigh: We went to the Oval Office, where they presented the medals. I was very tempted to crawl under the furniture there, I'll tell you.