Two Art Deco Lapel Watches
Watch
GUEST:
My father had a jewelry store from early 1900s until about 1970, probably. I can't remember exactly when he retired. I worked at it until I was married. And the things that he wanted we kept, and the rest of them sold them at an auction.
APPRAISER:
We're going to start first with the turtle. He's made out of 18-karat yellow gold, but what I love about it is the chasing. Chasing is a different form of engraving, and you see how they chased the feet over here. The relief and the detail, they just look so real.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
We have diamonds and we also have what they call Madeira topaz. Now, they're all cut, and it's like a puzzle. They have to fit everything together, so there's a lot of labor in that. And then it's tied together with the little diamonds. We'll flip it over and you can see again the detail on the belly. We still have a little surprise for them, don't we?
GUEST:
Yes, right.
APPRAISER:
So let's bring it back around. And you push this little button in the front, and as you push that, we push down on the tail. And he opens up... It's a watch.
GUEST:
Correct.
APPRAISER:
A woman would wear that on her coat, and then when she would look down, she would be able to tell the time. This piece, I feel, at auction would bring $8,000 to $10,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my. It's unbelievable.
APPRAISER:
Maybe you need to start wearing it again.
GUEST:
No way.
APPRAISER:
Let' move on to this. Here we have a beautiful Art Deco lapel watch. You have carved emerald-- a rather large piece, I may add-- beautifully accented by diamonds, black onyx and enamel. And it's hung from this cord, which we call Hastings cord. They actually used to use this a lot on watch bracelets. Now, we looked on the back, we found hallmarks that identify it as being French. It is platinum, and you also have it accented by old mine diamonds. Now, what I'm going to do is spin it around for everybody and we can see that it's a watch. It has the name of the company that probably sold it at one point in its life. At auction, $30,000 to $50,000.
GUEST:
Gee. (laughs) That's unbelievable.
APPRAISER:
It is numbered in the back. And after showing it to everybody at the jewelry table and talking over with the watch people, there is a slight possibility, with research, we feel that it may possibly be Cartier. It's worth looking into because let's say it was Cartier and we can document that, then the price would change.
GUEST:
It would be even higher?
APPRAISER:
Higher, of course. So it could be possibly $50,000 to $75,000.
GUEST:
That's unbelievable. Are you kidding?
APPRAISER:
No, I'm not kidding you.
Appraisal Details
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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