Antique Dutch Silver 3-MastTall Ship

833 silver lion passant hallmark..Minreva "A" For Amsterdam"K" Date-1920???....Maker Mark??

5" Long..4-1/2" Tall.....Any additional help or information appreciated.

There is one on Ebay....Asking alot of ??? I cannot find any other info.

 

http://www.925-1000.com/Fnetherlands_Date_Code.html

Read the "Notes" at the bottom of the Hallmarking Column. Your lion has a roman numeral II, making the date after 1953. If it were 1920, it would have had the Arabic 2 instead. Of course that also makes the purity .835.

Check your letter against the K's for the years after 1953 in the table on the page.

 

My k appears to be 1970....Thanks.

Still looking for Additional information,

 

Glad to help. As for that last mark? Assuming it's the maker, you're going to need to get a much clearer look at what it is. The only Dutch maker data base (beyond the few well-known makers who show up on some silver sites) I know of is in Dutch and only works if you have letters to use for the search. I can't see any letters on that last punch.

 

It is a weak imprint....Hope these can help.

 

There's one on eBay at the moment:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-3-Masted-Sailing-Ship-Model-DUTCH-SILVER-hallmarks-/281223971118

--- Susan

 

The shape of that far right mark looks like the same shape as the 3 marks on the far right of the eBay ship. I can't make out what is written on any of them. Those marks seem to have the same shape as the Dutch marks used from 1953 to present for "Mark according to weight of chain: Number 100 = 500 grams silver hallmark."

Scroll down to the 36th mark with "100" on it. Click the "more information" link. Note that the 23rd mark with "20" is the same shape, but smaller and used from 1814-1953 for "Weight of chains":
http://www.h.cx/?key=&country=Netherlands&province=&p=0
Direct link to the "more information."
http://www.h.cx/?ShowHallmark=11869

I doubt very much the "100" mark shape is the really the same shape, but thought I'd point out the similarity. It seems strange that the ship on eBay has 3 of these marks.

There seems to be more of these Dutch silver ships online:
http://www.worthpoint.com/worthoped...del-ship-mounted-base-height-12-14-width-9-78

--- Susan

 

It's really a modern novelty item, I'd value it a bit over the metal value but nowhere near the price of the ebay one.

It has some interest in that it dates from a period of what, for Britain, was very high inflation coupled with restrictions on the purchase of plain gold and silver bullion. People were keen to buy bullion anyway to put their spare cash in something other than plain old money.

The consequence was a huge outpouring of precious metal in the (quite legal) form of sets of medallions, sets of ingots with pictures on, stuff like this ship, and possibly the most extreme piece I ever bought, a silver saucer or small shallow bowl with a center, inside a silver rim, of a 4 ounce 22 carat gold disc. That item cost me about a quarter of the metal value because I don't think anyone else at the auction had really examined it, and the reserve was foolishly low.

Once the economic situation changed, the market for what amounted to 'disguised' bullion vanished, people could buy gold and silver in chunks, and things returned to normal.

The recent peak in metal prices probably saw a huge amount of this early 70s material scrapped, it used to be that virtually every auction I went to had something in the way of medallions or ingots in fine wooden cases that I'd buy for a tad less than the bullion value.

The Dutch have a long history of selling novelty silver items to the British, so this ship is in an old tradition. Pity it's not a nef.

 

Um...wot's a nef?

And Happy New Year, Af!

 

A nef is much bigger and sometimes served a utilitarian purpose (though sometimes they were purely decorative). Google "silver gilt nef" and you'll see some. The word nef by itself is fairly useless to search.

 

Thank you all for the great answers & information!!!

Would mine be considered a nef" ??

 

No, a nef must have wheels.

 

af, thanks for the info on bullion history during that period, very interesting. I also wasn't sure what a "nef" was. The one like yours on WorthPoint was called a nef. I saw several silver Dutch ships with wheels called nefs like the followings. At first I thought they might be wine bottle holders, they aren't.

http://spoonplanet.com/shipshuge1.html
http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/6536885
http://collections.glasgowmuseums.com/starobject.html?oid=126823

What purpose the wheels, what purpose ships with wheels, is beyond me. Welll, I guess with wheels you could drag the ship through the desert if you had a mind to. Just yesterday while scanning the TV channels in hopes of finding something, anything, worth watching, I came upon a hunt for a ship(s) in the Mojave Desert. Seems there have been fleeting glimpses of ships from Spanish galleons to Viking ships in that desert and possible other deserts in that corner of the world since the mid 1800s. It's one of those perpetual treasure hunts similar to the Lost Dutchman Mine in what, the Superstition Mts? I know, I know!!! Those silver Dutch ships with wheels are really the Flying Dutchman ghost ship that is now wandering through the deserts of the U.S. southwest.
http://www.desertusa.com/desert-activity/lost-ship-desert.html
http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=52
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...old-ghost-ships-reminder-desert-used-sea.html

I've worked with the mark on the far right of your ship and the 3 marks on the far right of the eBay ship hoping to see something. I didn't have any real luck. Yours looks like it has the number 18 or 16 on it and other "stuff." Just a little funny, on zooming in on yours it almost looks like a large duck head with bill on the left. Like the duck is lying on it's back. When you rotate the pic 90 degrees to the right, the duck is standing upright. Can't make out anything on the 3 marks of the eBay ship other than possible a "3" or "W" on the far right mark.

--- Susan

 

Nefs have wheels because they are large and if they are moved along a table, they have to roll. I would not call OP's a nef. It's not sufficiently grand.

 

This piece is, as already said, a modern novelty item - but while intended for table service, a 'nef' wouldn't have to be wheeled (the name is archaic French for 'ship').

~Cheryl

These excerpts are from an 1860 exhibition catalog:

 

Looks like I was wrong. I have only seen them wheels, but it appears the term is more flexible.

 

I hope know this will go down on your permanent record

 

It takes a smart man to admit they were wrong.......good on you !!!!