It's the dream of anybody who haunts Goodwill, Salvation Army, antique stores and yard sales: That item you picked up for a few dollars might be worth thousands or, better yet, have some sort of historical significance.

Three years ago a local club was cleaning house, and several items wound up in a Goodwill store. Dealer John Cook, who makes it his business to haunt such shops and pick up collectible items to sell on eBay, noticed an antique cabinet off in the corner.

“;It was in really good condition, but they wanted $400 for it,”; recalled Cook. “;Too much! But when I returned in the afternoon, it was marked down to $100 because no one could figure out how to open it. So I bought it.”;

But what did he have? Cook decided after some research that what he had on his hands was Queen Liliuokalani's private music console, and, no less, a secret gift of royalist solidarity from Queen Victoria.

Surely something to interest Iolani Palace?

According to Cook, palace officials were not interested in looking at the piece.

But, Iolani Palace curator Stuart W.H. Ching said: “;We have not been able to verify the desk as belonging to the palace. We have spoken and e-mailed with Mr. Cook on many occasions, but the fact is we simply can't place the item in the royal family.

“;Part of the problem is that inventories from the era are so vague. Whatever it is that John Cook has, it's a nice-looking piece in good condition.”;

Cook said, “;You'd think that Iolani Palace would have more musical items in their collection, given that the Hawaii royal family was so musical.”;

Ching said that the palace does have a piano and a banjo but nothing like a music stand.

THE PIECE looks rather like a speaker's podium or a stand-up writing desk from the Victorian age, made of mahogany and tinted with iodine gas, a standard finish of the period. It has pressed-silver decorative inserts, the header being a Shakespeare quote and the drop-door being an Art Nouveau cutout of a peacock. Behind the inset is rough-textured blue burlap, likely a repair of what may have been blue glass, according to Cook, who has copied the peacock motif and transferred it to electric guitar amplifiers.

The interior is made of several flat shelves, sized to fit sheet music. The inside of the door has bone labels to categorize the contents, upon which the handwriting is still visible.

One thing missing, however, is any kind of artisan's label. That made detective work on the console's provenance difficult, until antique auctions in England began featuring cabinets crafted by William Cowie of Shapland and Petter. Soon, era catalogs became available, and Cook was able to ID the piece as a Shapland and Petter original—specifically Cabinet No. 979, the “;Henry IV,”; thanks to the Shakespeare quote.

The discovery caused another piece of the puzzle to fall into place. It turned out that one of Shapland and Petter's biggest customers was Queen Victoria, who liked to purchase them as gift items.

Articles appeared in British newspapers about Cook's find, and Cook has received congratulations from England, such as from Antonia Brodie, furniture curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and from collectors, some of whom have offered as much as $10,000 for the piece. Recent auctions of similar works in England easily reach that amount.

But the Victoria/Liliuokalani connection? The silver pressing of the Shakespeare quote also features an image of a rose, and the last line of “;Aloha 'Oe”; waxes teary over the roses of Maunawili. Rose images, believes Cook, are a kind of royal secret handshake. Maybe Victoria sent it to the deposed Hawaiian queen as a kind of royal-sister solidarity gift.

More down to earth, Cook was browsing books at Barnes & Noble one day and was leafing through Malcolm Naea Chun's “;The Queen's Songbook,”; which contains samples of Liliuokalani's handwriting. The style looked familiar. He compared it to the writing on the bone labels, and they matched.

Cook had handwriting experts look at it as well. The individual letters are a close match; however, handwriting analysis is largely based on sentence structure, and there simply aren't enough words on the bone labels for a definitive match.

Even if it was Liliuokalani's, where has it been all this time? One thing for sure, “;it's been in the dark and away from children for more than a hundred years, it's in that good a shape,”; said Cook.

Because it hit the Goodwill store at about the same time as other things liquidated during a housecleaning at the Pacific Club, it's possible it was off in a corner at the private club for a century or more, thinks Cook, adding that the club was where the revolutionaries hung out.

He's selling the music console and believes he could get at least $250,000 if his circumstantial evidence linking it to Liliuokalani holds up. Or you can “;Buy It Now”; on eBay for a cool $12.5 million.

Cook hopes it will stay here in the islands.

“;It is, after all, the earliest depiction of 'Aloha 'Oe,'”; claims Cook.

Caveat emptor.