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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MrNate, post: 1419836, member: 5515&quot;]Awesome guesses for those that had a chance to answer. If anyone else is checking out the post, and I start revealing the details, you are happy to read the earlier part and try to compare your observations with others before reading on. So everyone had great observations all around. I had a few of my own I&#039;ll share as it may help someone in the future in this type of situation. Observations from the photos:</p><p><br /></p><p>-Since I&#039;m scanning through 100&#039;s of listings very quickly, I&#039;m usually drawn to one element that gets me looking closer. In this case, the top row caught my eye. It was the tone of the metal, the shapes of the flatware, and the overall look of &quot;flimsy&quot; metal (not a bad thing) that got me to click the listing</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]223559[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>So the pictures are blurry and pretty crappy, I get to use that to my advantage against everyone else. That&#039;s actually a great sign, as it typically is found with inexperienced sellers (strangely this seller is actually very experienced they just take bad photos). Experienced sellers identify silver, inexperienced sellers sell silver to me... <img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/wink.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=";)" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>So once I see something that interests me, I try to gather as much information about the items as possible before asking questions. Ideally, I would like to always make purchases without asking any questions, because time and time again I&#039;m reminded that if you ask too many questions, you don&#039;t get to buy the goodies.</p><p><br /></p><p>In this case, I never asked for additional photos and made the purchase blindly (well, not quite blindly) based on the following positive signs (i&#039;m not claiming this is fool proof, but it&#039;s enough for me to take the gamble):</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Single black spots....what? Take a look at the two areas I&#039;ve circled:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]223560[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]223561[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Now before someone on here gets mad at me, I&#039;m not suggesting this singular black marks only appear on silver, but they definitely occur much more often on silver. In all the items I&#039;ve collected in my short hunting career, I seem to find coin/sterling pieces with these SUPER STUBBORN black holes of &#039;oh my god that takes some rubbin to get off&#039; tarnish spots. It&#039;s as if the accumulation of copper inside the piece was looking for an escape and found a tiny little hole to start the tarnishing process....Call me crazy, but that&#039;s a relevant detail to me.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. The patterns the patterns the patterns! </p><p>Some of you spoke about the forks in the set, and I agree that could be a clue, but not one that I thought of. I&#039;d say I didn&#039;t form an opinion either way with these. But what was relevant was the pattern clues. The top row caught my eye because I&#039;m thinking old coin silver, which often comes in these very generic patterns. In my mind, I&#039;m separating modern from potentially really old. And the great combination of a plain pattern is something that looks thin. Think of this: making silverplate is cheap and easy, so why not making it heavy and feel good. But a plain pattern with thin lines says we might have goodies here. </p><p><br /></p><p>3. The engravings are everywhere!!!</p><p>This takes a close peak, but you can see engravings on many of the spoons, and they look different. This is where I started to get pretty excited about the set. Here&#039;s what my mind is honing in on as I inspect the photos carefully:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]223562[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>4. Paper thin, and a crack!</p><p><br /></p><p>This spoon edge looks sooo thin to me, another great clue:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]223564[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>and the most significant clue of all the photos, this bowl is cracked, a silverplated spoon is never going to crack like this:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]223568[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>So hopefully that gives you some insight into the subtle details just below the surface. For anyone wondering why I couldn&#039;t get more photos; without revealing too much I figured out before contacting the seller that they own an antique store (to forever remain nameless) so I know anything I ask is quite likely to reveal too much information. I have to rely on the base of knowledge that the tiny details provide me and take the gamble. Luckily I was right! I&#039;ll post photos of the goodies later (off to give my kids a bath) but in the meantime, I can tell you one of the spoons is engraved &quot;Lemuel J. Shaw&quot; which is certainly worth a search on Google. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/smile.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":)" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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