Unable to get value from paper-input - polymer-1.0

Question

<question-chrome question="{{question}}">
<paper-input label="{{question.Description}}" id="answer" name="answer" type="number">
{{question.Description}}
</paper-input>
</question-chrome>
Where question-chrome.html has the followign code:
<template>
<div class="questioncontainer {{question.Type }}" style="padding-top:10px;">
<div class="questiontext">
<span class="questiontitle">{{question.Title}}</span>
</div>
<div class="questionanswers">
<content select=".questionanswers"></content>
</div>
</div>
</template>
I am using the above paper input, when I am trying to get the values from this, I cannot find the value anywhere. the question element/object, I can get and see every other item's value of the question object. How would I get the value of what is put into the input field? in this case, the value was 3323.
this:
The code to retrieve it I have tried all of these:
this.$.answer.value;
And the results through developer tools in chrome result in:
Object
AdditionalProperties:null
Answers:Array[0]
Code:720061
Description:"Monetary marks ...."
ExtensionData:null
HasAnswers:false
HasChildren:false
Id:"9999dcc3-d3eb-40cf-8414-05ae385e11cf"
IsDefault:true
IsDeleted:false
.....so on and so forth
I went through all of these and did not find it. It is a numeric type of field, so not sure if that has anything to do with it.