Featured Qianlong collection

I'd half forgotten that, possibly because the jade pieces don't often make their way West. The gold either. The few jade bits that did and went home, went sky high.

 

The white jade mostly goes unrecognized here, my river pebble a piece of the best you could find in China every jade shop I venture into they are trying to buy it from me with offers over 20K from dealers looking for a quick buck, I was in an auction house in Alameda, California and was testing the appraiser asking how much for my jade pendant and she said they weren’t interested she gets these by the dozens… I told her I’d take them all then, lol. Same thing in antique shops, Chinese dealers in the US know what it is but westerners for the most part have no idea.

lots of things you wouldn’t think valuable if you know, I found a large special polished walnut in an antique shop in a Jackson, CA for $10 worth a couple hundred in China, my friend the jade book author bought a early horn Chinese made gold scale from the gold rush minors for $90 and sold it in China for $1000.

 

This I think is a chair from the palace collection superimposed over our friends chair the curve of the arms and other details are very similar given the natural differences found in antlers.

 

Thus why junquers go out scouring for mistakes. I was at a church sale last year on the second day, and bought a glass and sterling bauble for $5 ...signed Lalique. Not the good stuff, but everyone missed it by a factor of 30 or so. Some things turn up in odd locations, sold by people who have no clue what's on their shelf.

 

Myself included in that pack of clueless sellers on occasion. I think I might have thrown a sizable piece of that white river jade in the dirt at my old home as a kid. My grandfather gave me lots of stuff besides old coins and old baseball cards, I had a box of old arrow heads and a box of someone’s rock collection, not he little kits but someone’s serious collection all kinds of rocks. I remember one that was a yellowish white rock he size of a red potato, it looked shiny oily waxy the yellowish brown outside color could have been skin… to me it looked nothing special, it wasn’t flashy crystal. Just a slightly translucent rounded river rock. A lot of he estates in California my grandfather emptied out for the auction company had items from China, that rock from cardboard box to terrarium to discarded in he back yard maybe worth a small fortune or not I can only wonder?

 

Wow,I would have never guessed!

 

Gold right now is a little under $89g white best quality Hetian $1000g not including the Qing dynasty attribution.

but this is not the most expensive Chinese jade, not nephrite or Jadeite, That’s reserved for True best Tianhuang is the most rare at a total production in history of only 500,000.g of all quality mined over thousands of years the deposit is exhausted. Auction values have exploded in the last 10 years now at or exceeding $100,000.g according to some sources.

 

One of my examples, an unsightly little bottle which I recognized as a rare antique tangerine skin snuff bottle. Bought for a few euros, worth a few thousand.

 

Nice score

 

WOOT! Things to keep an eye out for, because you never know.