How Much is my Silver Worth?

So in all likelihood you got here searching for information on some silver. I do the history of silver and appraise in person. I do not appraise online. Value is hard to determine, but I have a friend who is developing his skills online and developing an online (free) appraisal service. If you want a value check out his site and ask him for advice:

http://www.thenakedappraiser.com/

If you live in Oklahoma send me an email

redavis001 (at) gmail.com

Sterling Marked Macie

 

My skills at photography are pretty poor and I lack the ability and camera at this moment to show great detail. This is one of the reasons why there are not better pictures of the gobs of flatware that I bring in and process. I just cannot get close enough to really show the extraordinary detail of some of them. This piece is one of those times where the camera has utterly failed to capture its beauty. 

I was talking to one of my favourite dealers at the local flea market, she usually has silver on hand and knows a bit about it. I had poked around on her table and there was nothing of real interest and on a whim I asked her if she had anything else. She reached in a box and pulled out this little thing. Its about the size of the palm of my hand, about half a dollars length. It was clear that it was sterling (from the mark on the back) and was stamped MACIE. The best part was that you could tell that it had been hand hammered. the hammer strikes are all over the piece but not purposely.  This is a piece you can tell that has been made by someone still learning the craft but getting better and better at it.

Every other little dip on the rim has a hand chased figure in remarkable detail. There are some worms with leaves, a small bird like a sparrow, a flower, a butterfly, some grapes, and a larger bird like a duck. Around the rim on the underside there is geometric chasing. The style looked Mexican thought there are no marks to that effect. The best I could track down was a really shaky report of a Macie silversmith in Mexico but with some pieces it may take years to know or you may never. Unfortunately this picture can not really do this piece justice. I got it for a song, and it is small but it already has a nice place in the display cabinet. Unlike a lot of my silver that is an industrial product and is beautiful for being a beautiful industrial product. This is a beautiful piece of silver made by someone moving towards mastery of an ancient craft.

Sterling Compote For the Melt

 

In Shawnee Oklahoma this weekend I also picked up this weighted sterling compote.  It is marked P.S.C.O. 151 Sterling weighted. As you can see in the picture the middle has some sort of blunt force trauma that occurred to it. This makes it useless as an object of beauty unless crumpled metal is your thing. The great part? It was a dollar. It will go into my box of trashed sterling that is waiting for the melt. My other thought was the I could cut a sheet from it and try my own hand at hammering a small object from it. A thimble perhaps? Or a smaller bowl? At any rate, for a dollar you can't beat that with a stick.

El Unico Orange Knife

This advertisement from The Century magazine from 1894 shows another Victorian way of dealing with the orange.  The knife is steel and is silver plated. The handle is sold in ivory, pearl, celluloid, sterling and silverplate. It "has a fine saw edge" and can "cut orange and grapefruit smoothly without releasing any bitter oils from the skin".

Other than this advertisement I have never heard of El Unico of St. Augustine Florida. Rainwater nor any other of my references mention this maker. It is possible that they are a reseller. However, te blade is stamped with their mark. To be honest again if someone brought me this knife I would probably confuse it with a cheese knife which it closely resembles. 

Spaulding & Company Sterling Silverware Advertisement

This is an advertisement in The Century magazine from 1894 from Spaulding & Company Inc. for their sterling flatware. They claim addresses in Paris and Chicago.

Daniel Low Salem Massachusetts.

This is an advertisement for Daniel Low silversmith in Salem Massachusetts. It appeared in The Century magazine in 1894 and features the Salem pattern.  I like the description of "florid European patterns"

Dragon Pitcher, Simpson Hall and Miller, Pride of the Collection

 

This silverplate pitcher is part of the pride of the collection. It has an inside spout shield, incised decorations and the figure of a dragon on top. The dragon is not quite the Welsh dragon but is close enough as far as Victorian silverplate goes for my taste. If it is not a dragon it might be described as a sphinx though it is defiantly not an Egyptian sphinx.  Its tail is a swirly scaled affair almost like a sea monster but there is no other sign of sea life on the pitcher so I think this can be dismissed. The scroll work on the side and the shape of the handle add a Persian influence, perhaps Assyrian. Look at the handle, the scroll work, shape and proportion recall the ancient world.  I have not yet found this piece in a catalogue but I hope to soon.  

It is from Simpson, Hall and Miller, also known as Simpson, Hall, Miller & Co.  from Wallingford Connecticut. They were founded in 1866.  By 1895 they were manufacturing sterling. They also had the contract to manufacture the Eagle Wm rogers Star Brand flatware. In 1898 they were a founding member of the International Silver Company. When they joined international, they focused mainly on sterling becoming the center of the International Silver Companies sterling production. This means their mark was used well beyond 1898 for sterling ware. Silver plate was left to to other companies, Derby, Wilcox, Meriden Britannia Company.

Above we see some of the marks used by Simpson, Hall, Miller and Co. This is not exhaustive of the marks that they used. The pitcher uses a mark of the name Simpson, Hall, Miller and Co. above a rectangle that reads quadruple plate with Wallingford Connecticut below. Another common mark are the initials seen above S H M &Co. and for sterling the S in a shield with a helmet.

Peter Rabbit another Super Silver Saturday Find

 

So there I am walking around the shop. I stop here and there picking up things and flipping them over looking over the mark, setting it down. I can't help it. Chrome, pewter, really cheap plate I pick it up just to be sure. I almost walked past this little rabbit. Its a statue and I have little patience for knickknacks. But my partner was checking something out and I did not want to wander to the next booth. I picked the little rabbit up. Is this Peter Rabbit?  It was too shiny, a sign that it has been factory varnished as an anti-tarnish measure. This means that it is close to current manufacture and not anything older. The copyright from BFA Scotland on the back reading 1989 confirmed this. A second copyright FW & Co. is also on the back. FW & Co. hold the rights to license Peter Rabbit. The shovel handle has been broken and glued back. It is a sloppy repair. But, on the good side the piece is under ten dollars. 

Flipping it over the mark reads Industria Argentina. This is a mark that Argentinian goods carry. It is like the Made in USA mark for Argentina. I see a lot of material for sale on the internet that thinks this is a company.  It is not, it is a program started by Peron to raise national pride and mark Argentinian goods. Then over in the corner small, hard to read, slightly hidden is the real deal. 925, and sterling marked. It also reads in Spanish "an idea visited in silver" 

It turns out to weigh 7 3/4 ounces. Not too bad for under ten dollars. Given the circumstances just this once I decide to purchase a knickknack. My guess is that the seller did not know what they had thought it had a bad repair, and was pretty worthless. If it had been plate it would have been. As an object it is pretty damaged. As a chunk of precious metal its a very pretty way to store value. I wish I could have gotten a better picture but it just was not working out today. 

The Messenger Cup Polished

 

This is "The Messenger Cup 1933" after being polished. It took some real rubbing and there was a bit of hot glue down inside that had to be picked out. Still no secret powers but there is plenty of time for that. Click here to read about the piece and see a picture before polishing.

Buttonhooks

I see a lot of buttonhooks while out and about. Sometimes they are very inexpensive, sometimes not. My dream is to find an orange peeler marked as a buttonhook and pick it up on the cheap.  However, I had very little understanding of this item until I cam across a whole society dedicated to the buttonhook. So rather than recreate someones quality quality research I will refer you to it here.   I found this site after following a link about hotel silver. This lead to a very very short article (it is also where I borrowed this image) about buttonhooks which lead to the bigger collectors site. They show a few buttonhooks that appear to be hollow handle sterling affairs. I think next time I see one on the cheap I should pick it up and try to learn how they work.

Souvenir Spoons

I don't really deal with souvenir spoons. I have a few, one from Oklahoma and a few from other places. There are a few that are pretty interesting in a shop downtown but they are priced a bit higher than I am willing to pay.

However, if you are looking for souvenir spoons makers marks this may be a good place to start.   They seem to know what they are talking about. The site is titled American Sterling Souvenir Spoons and they have a good list of resources.

I hope it helps you with your search.

Two More Things From This Weekend

These are two more things I picked up on my amazing silver Saturday this past weekend.

The first is a sterling candle holder. No maker's mark or the like, just sterling and weighted written on the bottom.  These pieces are all over the place. They contain very little silver, and the weight comes from resin or plaster in the bottom. This keeps the very thin shell from being crushed. They are not worth that much, but they do what they claim, which is to hold candles. This one is dented, tarnished (but that won't last long) and in rough condition. The good news is that it is still sterling and with enough of them I might be able to trade them in for replating something or just the silver itself. However, lots of later matched sets in different patterns had candlesticks like this that matched. So, some you have, may have greater value to a collector looking to round out their collection of a particular pattern than just the silver price. This added value makes them worth more than just the silver alone so don't just go out and tear them apart.I also feel the need to restate this, its not the value of the silver its what you like to do with it anyway.

The second is a sterling cup by Wallace. Specifically, Wallace & Sons Manufacturing Company. This company change its name to Wallace Silversmiths Inc. in 1956 and still operates.   This cup bears an older mark with a deers head. the number 3322 and the words Wallace and sterling.  The cup is once again heavily tarnished and I had a hard time making it out but on the side it is engraved. It reads "The Messenger Cup 1933" Pretty neat, although I have no idea what that means. I hope when I get it polished that when I drink out of it it will give me "secret powers". If it does I will let you know. 

The best part of all this? Well I found these by accident. I stopped off at the Episcopal Church rummage sale and found them sitting together at a table looking for a happy home. Being tarnished, and thus worth nothing I bought them for one dollar. That's right a candlestick and a sterling goblet for $1. Pretty good eh?

What to do with too much silver.

This advertisement from a 1907 Every Where magazine is something I had not see before. It is for a firm in New York -J.H. Johnston & Son that specialized in the buying and selling of silver. They mention Chafing Dishes, Bon-Bon dishes, berry spoons, coffee spoons and give a few prices.

Wiliam Babcock's book from 1708 A New Touch-Stone for Gold and Silver Wares

A quick perusal of the table of contents is well worth your time. It covers the types of items made, counterfeiting, and manufacturing techniques. 

American silver, the work of seventeenth and eighteenth century silversmiths, exhibited at the Museum of fine arts, June to November, 1906

Today should be a busy day so I will leave you one archive. This is a museum catalogue from 1906. It contains silver of a type I could never afford, but it is interesting to make a study of the writing and the forms that were popular at a given time.