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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 34670, member: 25&quot;]It&#039;s really a modern novelty item, I&#039;d value it a bit over the metal value but nowhere near the price of the ebay one. </p><p><br /></p><p>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&nbsp; put their spare cash in something other than plain old money.</p><p><br /></p><p>The consequence was a huge outpouring of precious metal in the&nbsp; (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&#039;t think anyone else at the auction had really examined it, and the reserve was foolishly low.</p><p><br /></p><p>Once the economic situation changed, the market for what amounted to &#039;disguised&#039; bullion vanished, people could buy gold and silver in chunks, and things returned to normal. </p><p><br /></p><p>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&#039;d buy for a tad less than the bullion value.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Dutch have a long history of selling novelty silver items to the British, so this ship is in an old tradition.&nbsp; Pity it&#039;s not a nef.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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