Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MrNate, post: 881365, member: 5515&quot;]Good evening my wonderful friends. As unbelievable as it is, this is again going to be a crazy good post, and I apologize as usual to those who have been searching without turning up the goodies. I&#039;m going to use this post to illustrate the beautiful subtle skill of searching online I hope you all continue to try out. I can&#039;t wait until I read on this forum &quot;i found this monster ____ silver because i tried something mrnate suggested.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Let&#039;s start with the &quot;pond find&quot;...I guess I should specify, I&#039;m making a fishing analogy, I consider the pond to be my local stores, and the ocean is the expansive internet market. I consider both areas wonderful locations to &quot;fish&quot; but I also recognize that the two environments are different and my expectations should be different. </p><p><br /></p><p>So here&#039;s my analogy between the two (if I&#039;m boring you, feel free to scroll down and just look at some shiny stuff). When I&#039;m fishing in my local &quot;ponds&quot; for silver, I&#039;m not expecting to catch a shark. Every so often, I catch a big bass but most of my catches are of the minnow variety. I catch something fairly frequently, but most days the finds aren&#039;t spectacular...It&#039;s the sum of finds that makes my pond hunting a worthwhile endeavor, and every so often I catch something great.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, when I go deep sea fishing, I spend a lot of time looking, and not a lot of time catching. Out here, I&#039;m hoping to land the big one which takes time, patience and skill. I have to be in the right place at the right time with the right level of knowledge to land a big one, and there&#039;s plenty of other fishers trying to do the same as me. But each time I fish, I get a better sense of how to identify if something good is waiting for me. Fishing in the ocean is a patient sport, you have to do a lot of it if you are going to catch anything.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, here&#039;s my little pond find of the day. My first clock, with tiny little marks on the edge. It was in plain view at a local thrift store that is super hard to find silver at. Price was $4, and it will probably make it into the scrap pile since I can&#039;t find any details about the maker:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]198966[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]198967[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]198968[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]198969[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]198970[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>With my pond catch out of the way, on to my ocean catch. If you&#039;ll indulge me for a minute, I&#039;ll start by giving you just as much information as I had, and then I&#039;ll talk through how I deduced I was probably about to land a big find. Let&#039;s start with the details I had available to me. I had two photos, and this title: &quot;Golden Corsica (Stainless,Gold Accent) by WALLACE SILVER&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]198971[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]198972[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>So, this is a good point in time to STOP....PAUSE.....DON&#039;T READ ANYMORE. Just look at the photos. Imagine that these two photos exist among a sea of photos. You aren&#039;t just staring at this one post, you&#039;re staring at hundreds of posts that are garbage looking for one post which is treasure. So, let me do my best to illustrate how I find this post among the many.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s what I noticed that led me to do some research:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. The seller listed the item as &quot;Stainless, Gold Accent&quot; but the photo clearly suggests that at a minimum the set is silver plated. Tone is the most important thing to get me started on figuring out if I have a gem in front of me, and the tone of the fork and spoon in the bottom right looks very promising.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. In my experience, listing this item as stainless this means the person is listing the set based on what is on the edge of the knives, not necessarily the markings on the backs of the forks and spoons.</p><p><br /></p><p>3. I also notice that the flatware on the far left is the same pattern, but all one solid color. Any time I see mixed sets it&#039;s a positive for the potential for silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>So armed with a few clues I jump to the internet to learn more about the wallace Corsica pattern. I first search &quot;Wallace Corsica sterling flatware&quot; to see if wallace made this set in sterling silver. I go to google images and read the descriptions, and after a few short minutes, I get the biggest clue. Wallace made corsica in stainless steel, but they made a pattern called &quot;Golden Aegan Weave&quot;....which...it appears they only made in sterling silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I have everything I need to go buy this set without ever seeing the marks. It&#039;s clearly not stainless based on tone, it&#039;s clearly not corsica if it&#039;s not stainless, and unless my fast research was wrong, it must be sterling. I send a message, we arrange to meet up, and without ever looking at the marks, I hand over $150. Here&#039;s the set, 1582 grams not counting the knives:[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in