Featured Finds Thread

Omg I had to laugh so hard just now
The French way! Well, I guess I'll have to have wine, cheese and baguette for dinner.. The things we do for antiques..

 

Cheers!... and Cheese! Enjoy your "cleaning tools"
And... be grateful I didn't gave you the hint to lick them or use your spit

 

My favorite trick for identification of some materials in jewellery... "To test it... taste it!"

 

This is amazing. Can you give an example? Say, how does 835 silver taste?

 

Oh, not this kind of neat identification, even if silver has a taste and smell
But for plastic vs natural material for example! Put your tongue on your varnished nail, you'll feel chemical you don't find in turtle shell or horn
Real nacreous pearls are gritty when rub on the edge of your front tooth.

 

I can smell silver. Very handy trick.

Anyhow, I do love a car boot sale and buying a random box of jewellery from some random bloke who gets REALLY random stuff. A hundred pieces, worked out atabout twenty cents a pop.

Including.....

 

And then from another random seller or two....

 

@Ownedbybear

...& the hoard gets fatter & fatter.

 

Looks like Bear hit a lick! Amber and coral at those prices? Sweet!

 

Y'all know me too well....

I'm fascinated by prayer beads with dice, I must say.

 

As I said in another thread I have been buying a lot lately. We have been selling the estate of a lady whose husband had a very high paying job & she thought her job was to spend it faster than he could make it. We have actually been selling stuff on & off since December. The thing was she didn't buy stuff to enjoy seeing around her house, she bought just for the sake of buying & if she liked it she bought all they had at the time. The majority of the stuff went directly to a warehouse they owned where it sat until it was hauled to one of 3 auction houses here in Columbia. Most of the stuff still has price tags attached & some was still in the shopping bags that she carried out of the store.

Anyway Tuesday night was table lots & shelf lots of stuff. I ended up buying 13 lots of various sizes & quantity. It actually took 3 loads in an SUV to get it all home. My treasures from Tuesday were a Towle sterling porringer & baby rattle
and a Waterford Christmas tree.
I got this table for $25.00 because the 2 sterling pieces were in a taped up box that I thought, & probably everyone else, that it was just another piece of Christmas stuff. The tree was buried under a bunch of ornaments & it is not going anywhere other than into the tote with my collection of Waterford Santa figurines to await this Christmas.

Two other things may or may not be big money makers, but were surprises to me when going through the various boxes. The first is a c.1940? B&W photo of lady all decked out in her ski outfit & a Kut Hing Pewter Swatow swing out trinket box.

 

Friday night is a little harder to get surprises as most stuff is sold by small box lots or individual items. However I did get a couple of unique items.

A c.1970 MIJ paper mache lipstick holder girl.


A c.1970 filigree trinket jewelry box.


A Royal Worcester Leightom Maybury cup & saucer.


A vintage c.1950's? Revere Ware copper blacksmith's ashtray set. The detail on this piece is amazing. The little tools inclues 2 tongs that actually open & close.


This piece was a little confusing to me at first because I took the little card literally & thought it was quite morbid.

However this is what this box would have actually held.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Qu...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

 

Admittedly, I haven't had the best luck lately as far as very cheap finds go. Still insanely jealous of all you folks who find hoards of silver and gold for pennies on the dollar. Occasionally, I'll get a small silver ring or pendant for cheap, but otherwise I've consigned myself to hunt for old costume jewelry. Here's this weekend's finds. Pretty sure the brooch (over 3 inches at widest point) is bakelite (held in place with screws).

 

Love the casket box! I definitely would have bought it just to display that card alone.

 

Are the beads garnets?
The brooch is lovely.

 

Nice! is the second one a locket? Is there anything inside?

 

Yeah, they're garnets. First bakelite (hopefully) find of the season.

Thanks! Yeah, the second one's a locket. There's nothing inside it, but both tiny glass (I think they're glass; at the very least, they feel too cold/heavy to be plastic) windows are still there. I've read that belts/garters are a Victorian mourning symbol, so I wonder if this one was commemorating a soldier's death.

 

I was wondering, too. Maybe if you are interested you could start a separate thread about that one?

 

What is the origin of the masks..Switzerland, germany? thank you