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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;J Dagger, post: 9806242, member: 10944&quot;]So I was on a message board (not this one) and someone asked if anyone had ever found a solid gold flatware service thrifting. The subject of the thread was someone finding a silver service at thrift. I laughed to myself at their naïveté. Then thought I’m sure there is an oligarch or two somewhere that has one. Maybe French royalty or something but I’m sure a complete large service is beyond insanely rare. I however wanted to see what the www had for sale in the way of solid gold flatware and so I searched. There are little bits and pieces here and there. I think one small set for serving fish or dessert or something came up. The most common thing seems to be a two or three piece set for gifting to babies. I gave my niece a silver set when she was born. The kids who get gold are bit luckier. Eventually you get gilt things slipping into your search. The piece I’m presenting was identified as gilt. When I started looking at this little spoon in photos it looked more like just plain gold than gold gilt to me. Gilt flatware has a beautiful gold look but often seems to lack the deep luster of solid gold. This one seems to have that luster. Then I looked at the hallmarks. The crown and fleur de Lis I was unsure of. The rooster mark looked an awful lot like a French 1798-1809 gold mark though. The fleur de lis being well used by the French added possible support to this theory. Of course there is a very real possibility these are just Hanau silver marks on a gilt spoon. However they got me thinking maybe this piece had been misidentified and so I took a low risk gamble and bought it. I expected that when I received it there was a chance I’d look first at the common points of wear and immediately see wear that exposed the silver or other metal below the gold. However there is not one indication on any common wear spot of only a thin layer of gold applied over silver or another metal. All the common wear spots are perfectly golden. Whatever it’s origins this spoon seems to have some legitimate age so I’d expect at least some minuscule sign of worn gilding on an object not housed in a protective case. The only place that looks questionable is the cast animal head on both sides of the spoon. There is plenty of black up there. It could be that the gilding didn’t reach and/or didn’t adhere to the crevices, nooks, crannies, and corners. Conversely it’s possible that the black/dark areas are just an artifact of the casting process that obscured the gold below it rather than where no gold adhered in the first place. I plan to test the piece but I’m curious to hear what others think first. I couldn’t have really bought a solid gold spoon could I have? It’s much more likely that I didn’t than that I did. It’s a neat little salt spoon at a decent price even if it’s just gilt so I’m fine either way. More likely I’m trying to convince myself it’s gold than that it actually is gold. So, what do you think I have? French made solid gold, Hanau gilt silver, something other than either? Are you familiar with these hallmarks?</p><p><br /></p><p>Also what do you make of my animal? Goat? Kind of funny that we had a silver figural sheep piece recently that may not have actually been sheep at all. Maybe my goat is a chimpanzee. Maybe we will never know what it is.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also Also where would you scratch this thing on a stone if you owned it? Should it be gilt I want the spot it’s rubbed off to be as inconsequential to the items value as possible. If it is gilt a rubbed spot will be pretty glaring no matter where I do it I feel. [ATTACH=full]487305[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487306[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487307[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487308[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487309[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487310[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487311[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487312[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]487313[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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