Featured Dumb luck? (Saphiret.)

We've got an ice storm in progress and I'm stuck inside. (Lots of time to write.)

Every January there is a one-day indoor garage sale at our fairgrounds, $3 admission, 90 booths, almost all the sellers are dealers who have booths elsewhere, getting rid of inventory, etc. In general you aren't going to find some under priced treasure because for the most part people know what they are selling, additionally word is that all the dealers shop the other tables as they are setting up. The fairgrounds also offers an “early bird entrance” during set-up the day before at 3pm for $30. I did pony up for that one year, but decided that for $30 it wasn't worth it.

But the sheer volume of booths and items makes for a great winter's day $3 outing and I have it on my calendar every year.

About 2 weeks ago, thanks to a post I saw on the Ebay jewelry board, I started educating myself about Saphiret. This is a type of glass – sapphire colored glass mixed with gold which takes on kind of a brown/blue hue, popular mid-19th century and beyond. I'm sure many of you reading this know exactly what it is/looks like but I've never found any, nor did I know what it was before 2 weeks ago.

I decided Saphiret would be a good thing to be on the lookout for at this indoor garage sale, honestly it seems like the kind of thing a lot of people don't know about.

My first purchase of the day was at a booth I stopped at right away, something or another caught my eye, and the first thing the seller says is that they are just putting this bunch of jewelry out that they "didn't have it out for the early-bird sale” etc. Could have been a line, but seemed plausible, there were some interesting things. I got that Edwardian collet necklace ($5) and two other necklaces I will post later for ID help. I saw this cross, but at $15, hesitated. 1) Crosses don't seem to sell that well. 2) The cross looked sort of looked newer to me in a way. Almost a modernist design. 3)The chain also looked newer to me, Italy 925. I almost passed on the whole thing, but looked at the cross again –under the fairgrounds lighting, it looked mostly like clear rhinestones, but there was something about the way it reflected that made me think, okay -looks a bit unusual? Alright I'll take it.

All day didn't find any Saphiret. Honestly at the end of the sale I realized I forgot to even look for it! Such was the mayhem at this event. Hundreds of people, crazed buyers, fun but exhausting.

Got home and took my purchases out. All of a sudden I look at the cross. What? Sort of brown/blue --oh my goodness, Saphiret! If I'm correct about that, dumb luck .

...Now for the questions and photos.

The cut and look of the stone makes me think older (Saphiret rather than Sapharine?) Is the setting older? Also one stone looks bluer than the others which I feel was a replacement, from the back looks like at that spot there was a repair. Thoughts on age, etc. appreciated!

 

Ooohhhh, yes saphiret ! The chain is a replacement and newer, the cross is older and may be a lower silver content than sterling, but that's OK because this is a very nice piece.

 

Hard to tell with the "blurry" photos,but it looks like a lead solder repair on the back of the cross and some stones have been replaced.

 

I see a very small repair on the back but with saphiret pieces of this age it's acceptable. The only stone that looks like it MAY have been replaced is the one you mentioned, but then again, it's still a saphiret stone and it could have just been that way from the beginning.

 

Thanks! Great to get a Saphiret confirmation. I appreciate you taking a look!

 

My pleasure !

 

!

 

Congrats Lucille! It's funny how that stuff works.
Years ago. I was waiting for a friend to come over to go to a little indoor flea market in the next little town over. While I was waiting for him to get here, I was chatting with somebody online , and the subject of Alexandrite colored glass came up. I had never had any but had seen some before at a glass show, and I was telling him that I didn't think I would ever have any since at $150 a stem the price was out of my reach.
Long story short......While my friend and I were at the flea market. I ran across 4 Heisey Alexandrite Carcassone Water Goblets for $15.00. One had a chip, so it was free the others were $5 each. I couldn't get them to the check out fast enough! LOL They were marked as "Purple Water Glasses".

Another time I had sold some Heisey on eBay to a local buyer, and the buyer asked if I could deliver it(he would pay extra) since he didn't want to trust it to the USPS for fear of breakage. Since I was going by that town anyway the next day to pick up a friend and head up to the 450 mile yard sale, I told him I would do it.
Well, we went by to deliver the glass and got to talking, and soon we were talking glass, and he hauled out a BEAUTIFUL Heisey Cobalt Blue Cathedral Vase. ( A Rare and Beautiful Piece).
Lo and behold.....a few days later during the start of the 450 mile yard sale, we were in Kentucky, and this dealer was just starting to unpack. As I was walking by, he pulled out a Heisey Cathedral vase in Moongleem Green! I couldn't believe my eyes! If I hadn't seen one just a few days earlier I never would have know what it was!. I bought it for $60.....and sold it a couple weeks later for well over $700!

 

Great story, Bdigger! Well done!

 

^5! Congrats on finding that cross. I've blind-lucked into precisely one piece of sapphiret in the last decade, and it wasn't perfect either. You never know about random sales; things turn up in the oddest places.


I recently found a pair of (ugly and since melted) 14k earrings in a church giveaway. I took the baggie they were in for another reason and figured the earrings were solid enough to investigate for marks. Found 14k on the posts and thought the rest was probably costume. Only it wasn't. I'll be putting a percentage back in the offering plate of course.

 

and I've been putting those off color pieces in the junk pile

 

If you're going to throw them, throw them at me! If you see a reddish or yellow stone with a weird blue flash in it, throw those on the pile too. The red is a simulated jelly opal called dragon's breath. So is the yellow, but it's rarer and wasn't made after WWII. If you find the green version ... let's just say I've heard of the green but never seen it.

 

Congrats on your beautiful cross lucille I've never heard of Saphiret but will keep an eye out for it now, thanks for posting this. Your photos are great, they really show what the stones look like.

 

Don't turn down pale lavender glass beads or rhinestones either; some of them are alexandrite glass. It turns blue like blue topaz under fluorescent lights and purple in natural light. I recently bought what I thought was a purple rhinestone necklace, only it turned blue when I got it home and into the kitchen. Whoops!

 

Are any of the stones round? The photos look a little strange for some reason.

 

I think they might be what is called, "cushion cut". Here is similar from an Ebay auction:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VICTORIAN-A...834276?hash=item5d40f62f24:g:Z-AAAOxyWalR0u5F

 

Yup, cushion cut Bohemian saphiret. New chain, as others have said, the cross is, oh, early 20th. Very nice. Even if someone doesn't want a cross, they'll want the stones.

I think you can pick up some good stuff from dealers selling outside their comfort zone and that especially applies to costume. They'll toss the rhinestones or whatever away, not realising. And as to Georgian paste....!

 

It will probably matter which fluorescent light wavelength it is seen under.
I'll guess yours were 'cool white'.

 

Let's not forget Rock Crystal !

 

I was going to have some fun with this only to be SHOCKED that there isn't a band named ROCK CRYSTAL!!!!