I had stopped doing my long thrift searches and transitioned to internet hunting lately, but today I decided to give the stores a shot again. It took about 6 hours of hunting to uncover this beauty. I’ll get the weight tonight and probably polish tomorrow. Price was $4
I'll be darned! Hiding one of those "sneaky" marks, were they? No idea where it's from. Never seen that mark either. Maybe you'll find a country or country mark under all that tarnish
For those like me who didn't know the term: A tughra (Ottoman Turkish: طغرا, romanized: tuğrâ) is a calligraphic monogram, seal or signature of a sultan that was affixed to all official documents and correspondence. It was also carved on his seal and stamped on the coins minted during his reign.
Wowzas! It’s a beaut! What part of the country are you in again? I do a good bit of thrifting and have only found a sizable amount of silver once. Even then they know what it was and had it behind the counter. They just had it priced lower than it’s value and then for some reason the manager knocked like 66% off when I asked about taking all of it. It was three bags of flatware. Curious does timing of your visits factor into your success do you think? As in do you go at a certain time of day to see new inventory or are your trips random? Maybe someday I’ll peel a sticker or peek in a cranny to see a non-standard mark the employees didn’t catch but to this point it’s been lots and lots of EPNS and the like!
I never like to talk about the location I'm in, it's just something I try not to bring onto the forums in general. In regards to your other questions: Timing: Timing certainly can be a factor, but the factors I consider more relevant are frequency and opportunity. Opportunity: I have a lot of thrift stores to choose from within the area I currently live. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't do quite as much hunting. So the most important factor in my hunting is the opportunity to visit a lot of stores. Frequency: I think I've done a fair job describing it on the forum, but it's not uncommon for me to visit over 10 stores in a day and travel over 100 miles in a day during my hunting. So I have found items in the morning, in the middle of the day, in the afternoon and at night. There are certainly a number of items I've found that were "very fresh" on the shelf, likely placed within the last few hours or less. But my belief is real silver, priced ridiculously low won't last a day in a thrift store, it will always be found. So by visiting a lot of stores with a high frequency, I'm giving myself a higher probably of the alignment of timing as a factor. I hope that makes sense. I wish I could post the number of days where I traveled far and wide, and I came up empty handed (because there are many of those days) but that isn't what this forum is about; for me it's about those very lucky days where opportunity and frequency allow for luck and timing to do what they do.
It is stunning, Nate. Looks transitional Art Nouveau-Art Deco, gorgeous. It does. I can't find it in my Ottoman Tughra files, but that doesn't mean it can't be Turkish. This could also be an adapted tughra, used after the Ottoman era. Tughras were also used in parts of Central Asia, btw.
Just to be clear, this is not an Ottoman Empire Sultan's tughra silver mark, but a fairly simple tughra in Islamic calligraphy (perhaps the makers name, location, or ?) - modern tughras can be found as personal monograms, decorative Quranic quotes, etc. Almost certainly Turkish, but personally, would think this attractive piece is fairly recent, doubt it's earlier than mid 20th century... Proper late Ottoman silver marks: To illustrate AJ's point on the use of tughras elsewhere - a 1949 Pakistani coin bearing a tughra: ~Cheryl
I got so excited about the big find I forgot to share the little find; i'm pretty sure this is my first egyptian silver:
