Featured One from the pond, one from the ocean

Good evening my wonderful friends. As unbelievable as it is, this is again going to be a crazy good post, and I apologize as usual to those who have been searching without turning up the goodies. I'm going to use this post to illustrate the beautiful subtle skill of searching online I hope you all continue to try out. I can't wait until I read on this forum "i found this monster ____ silver because i tried something mrnate suggested."

Let's start with the "pond find"...I guess I should specify, I'm making a fishing analogy, I consider the pond to be my local stores, and the ocean is the expansive internet market. I consider both areas wonderful locations to "fish" but I also recognize that the two environments are different and my expectations should be different.

So here's my analogy between the two (if I'm boring you, feel free to scroll down and just look at some shiny stuff). When I'm fishing in my local "ponds" for silver, I'm not expecting to catch a shark. Every so often, I catch a big bass but most of my catches are of the minnow variety. I catch something fairly frequently, but most days the finds aren't spectacular...It's the sum of finds that makes my pond hunting a worthwhile endeavor, and every so often I catch something great.

Now, when I go deep sea fishing, I spend a lot of time looking, and not a lot of time catching. Out here, I'm hoping to land the big one which takes time, patience and skill. I have to be in the right place at the right time with the right level of knowledge to land a big one, and there's plenty of other fishers trying to do the same as me. But each time I fish, I get a better sense of how to identify if something good is waiting for me. Fishing in the ocean is a patient sport, you have to do a lot of it if you are going to catch anything.

Now, here's my little pond find of the day. My first clock, with tiny little marks on the edge. It was in plain view at a local thrift store that is super hard to find silver at. Price was $4, and it will probably make it into the scrap pile since I can't find any details about the maker:



With my pond catch out of the way, on to my ocean catch. If you'll indulge me for a minute, I'll start by giving you just as much information as I had, and then I'll talk through how I deduced I was probably about to land a big find. Let's start with the details I had available to me. I had two photos, and this title: "Golden Corsica (Stainless,Gold Accent) by WALLACE SILVER"



So, this is a good point in time to STOP....PAUSE.....DON'T READ ANYMORE. Just look at the photos. Imagine that these two photos exist among a sea of photos. You aren't just staring at this one post, you're staring at hundreds of posts that are garbage looking for one post which is treasure. So, let me do my best to illustrate how I find this post among the many.

Here's what I noticed that led me to do some research:

1. The seller listed the item as "Stainless, Gold Accent" but the photo clearly suggests that at a minimum the set is silver plated. Tone is the most important thing to get me started on figuring out if I have a gem in front of me, and the tone of the fork and spoon in the bottom right looks very promising.

2. In my experience, listing this item as stainless this means the person is listing the set based on what is on the edge of the knives, not necessarily the markings on the backs of the forks and spoons.

3. I also notice that the flatware on the far left is the same pattern, but all one solid color. Any time I see mixed sets it's a positive for the potential for silver.

So armed with a few clues I jump to the internet to learn more about the wallace Corsica pattern. I first search "Wallace Corsica sterling flatware" to see if wallace made this set in sterling silver. I go to google images and read the descriptions, and after a few short minutes, I get the biggest clue. Wallace made corsica in stainless steel, but they made a pattern called "Golden Aegan Weave"....which...it appears they only made in sterling silver.

So I have everything I need to go buy this set without ever seeing the marks. It's clearly not stainless based on tone, it's clearly not corsica if it's not stainless, and unless my fast research was wrong, it must be sterling. I send a message, we arrange to meet up, and without ever looking at the marks, I hand over $150. Here's the set, 1582 grams not counting the knives:

 

Holy, cow, Nate - you've done it AGAIN! Congratulations!

 

Mr N8...........you've got talent !!!!

 

Sweeeeet! Handsome profit, N8!

 

Love your explanations!!!!!!!!!!!

 

WELL DONE AGAIN NATE !!! .. Joy.

 

Nate, wow, thanks for sharing your finds and goodies.

 

Amazing set, really beautiful. Love reading about your finds.

 

Geez, what a great buy! Aegean Weave was a popular pattern in the '70s and '80s, the Golden especially popular in the ostentatious '80s, when there seemed to be concern among my friends and their mothers that plain sterling wouldn't match the gold trim on their china patterns - it's not a favorite of mine, but it has what is to me, a desirable quality in that it coordinates nicely with both modern and traditional table settings...

~Cheryl

 

By the way, wouldn't discount the Faraone clock - a quality old Italian maker, it's something that would have been sold at a high-end jeweler (can't quite make out the maker's number, should be '345 MI')...

~Cheryl

 

Thank you for that extra information Cheryl, its not my favorite pattern either, but I’m not picky about cheap silver. I’m starting the slow process of polishing the set, hopefully I’ll get a photo up in the next few days.

 

Once again Mr. Nate inspires me to keep looking!

I love your analogy of the pond and the ocean

 

I decided to scrap it, I realized it must have spent a few decades inside a smokers house, and it smelled very strongly. Surprisingly, the maker used a nice heavy chunk of sterling for the face. After scraping off the glue the silver weighed in at 116 grams.

 

*sigh* As said, a quality maker...

~Cheryl

 

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/56730898_faraone-orologio-da-tavolo-in-argento-anni-70

~Cheryl

 

Thanks for sharing, and I didn't want to destroy it, but it wouldn't have been a good item to sell. The smell was going to be the hardest hurdle. It's always bittersweet to scrap something that was once beautiful, but I have to be practical in my choice to keep/sell/scrap.

 

MrNate,
What is your rule of thumb in valuing flatware? What weight do you assign to a spoon, or a knife, etc. And then how do you do the calculations? Is the current value per ounce about $15? Also, is coin silver considered to have a higher weight per piece and if so, how much more?
Sorry, my mind is all over the place. I am looking at some pieces I might buy right now. TIA.

 

Wow! (She said, yet again)

 

Great question. It's multi-faceted on how I value flatware I'm selling. Here's the three components that determine how I'll price items:

1. Convenience
2. Market observation
3. Rarity/Obscurity

1. So for me, I would like to list items conveniently, as my time is a valuable component. If I stumble across on single sterling fork, I might be able to get something slightly higher than spot if I list it individually. But that requires effort (and separate shipping costs). So I'll tend to combine mismatched items into one listing. Sometimes I'll start an auction at 99 cents and sometimes I'll start an auction at spot price, just depends on circumstances.

2. If I'm not listing the item as a mismatched item (say for example I'm selling 5 identical spoons) then I need to go find the fair market price to list it at. I'll go on ebay and look at sold listings (a great resource) and ideally find someone who sold a pair of spoons and calculate the price per spoon that should get mine sold. If I'm listing an entire set, I'm going to try to find sales of sets, and estimate price per item multiplied by the number of items in my set. I'm going to double check that my price doesn't somehow go below spot as I could sell as a scrap lot also.

3. For items or rarity or obscurity, I'm hoping/expecting a correlating premium above prevailing market silver prices. I'm a little more detailed and diligent in my market research but it still requires the process described in item 2 market observation. So for coin silver, it's always conditional to the maker on how the market values it. I would highly recommend you search "how to see sold prices on ebay" as it's one of the best resources out there. You can also get a free account on liveauctioneers but ebay is the best in my opinion.