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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;808 raver, post: 9793820, member: 4654&quot;]At first glance I thought it&#039;s French but then I saw what you had written, yup it&#039;s had the lock replaced. As a box collector I always want to see the lock, I don&#039;t know why but people always want to lock antique boxes, big mistake, they lock and don&#039;t open. This can happen for a few reasons, 1) the lock is old and the spring doesn&#039;t return fully, 2) the lock fails 3) the key supplied isn&#039;t the right one, the lock locks but the key won&#039;t open the box. I have a big bunch of antique keys I bought years ago, maybe 100 small box keys, these I have used for around 70% of the boxes I have but I never lock them when the lid is closed, of course having a key that turns the lock (and looks right) increases the value if I ever come to sell. Your lock is French on a English box, I don&#039;t know if you got a key with it? but unless you want to go to the hassle of finding a dona box and getting the lock from that I would just leave it. Coromandel wood was a English thing, so much so they made the wood almost extinct, your box is an early one by the time the 1890&#039;s came round the price for Coromandel was very high indeed. £40 isn&#039;t a bad price at all, I wouldn&#039;t want to tell you what to buy because art is in the eye of the beholder but antique boxes are about the longest lived antique you can buy, boxes can be used to hold anything, they are small and well made, hard to destroy and as a result they are plentiful. Rarely made boxes are what collectors are looking for, these boxes were expensive and took a long time to make, often out of expensive materials with a lot of skill and techniques that are lost to history (can&#039;t be reproduced). Your Coromandel box has this because the wood isn&#039;t available anymore. I collect art boxes mainly, they can be carved, inlaid, overlaid, set with fine paintings ect but you really do have to know your stuff, there are many that look to same&#039;ish but are worthless compared to the real thing.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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