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The Power of Silver Hallmarks

Hallmarks can be extremely powerful and important in silver. They tell the story of many pieces of silver that is absent on most other kinds of antiques. For the furniture enthusiast, there are sometimes paper labels or pencil mark signatures, but these are rare. For silver, the marks are often there, and when they are, you need to pay heed. The absence of a hallmark can also be significant but we'll get into that later. In this little article, I want to describe the non-US hallmarks that have been the most important to me in my business dealings. The photos are pieces I have bought and/or sold some of which are still available at Crescent City Connection in my silver section . I make a description of some of these marks and use many thematically similar pieces to give those descriptions. I don't claim these are the best of the best pieces, just items I've been able to trade. For me, at my current stage of collecting, nothing could be w...

Fakes in the Silver and Gold Trade - A Few Examples

I wanted to write today about something that happens from time to time to dealers-- even with pretty sharp eyes. Fakes. The fact is that almost all dealers have bought fakes. You won't see that many articles, because it's embarrassing and dealers think telling people about screw ups might hurt the reputation. The fact is, publishing these images may help others who are about to get burned or who will remember these examples in the future. Have a good image of a fake? Send it along and I will add it to this post. Fake 1736 Spanish 8 Escudo Sometimes you get burned by a counterfeit-- or other times just valueless items that lend an appearance of being a good score. Sometimes these fakes are intentionally fake and sometimes they are not. But either way, if you have integrity you should never pass them along even as "replicas" and it would be better if you spotted them before you plunked down your cash and didn't buy them at all. N...

The Beckley-Lincoln Book

Debates, Resolutions & Other Proceedings, of The Convention of the Commonwealth of MA to Which the Federal Constitution is Prefixed The 1789 title page inscribed by the owner, John James Beckley Once in a while. Once in a while you see a book that is so much more than a book. More than a leather binding and all the wear of the dirty fingertips over tallow candles. Sometimes you find a book that talks and breathes, that lives its history and the history of our nation with it. I want to tell you about John Beckley's book. It almost certainly wasn't his only book. He was a learned man. The largest collection of books in the country at that time was probably Thomas Jefferson-- some 6,500 volumes. More typically, people owned a few volumes and the very wealthy maybe owned a few dozen. As Brian Hoey once said, "Some studies suggest that as many 60 percent of colonial households owned at least one book". And more to the point, "..while many people owned ...

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