Late 19th-Century Moser Cruet
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APPRAISER:
What object have you brought in today?
GUEST:
I don't know-- I think it's a vase. I just got it last week, so I really don't know.
APPRAISER:
Where did you get it?
GUEST:
From my grandparents' house in Connecticut.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
They had it for many, many years in their curio cabinet, and you could never touch it, but you could just look through the glass. We weren't able to touch anything that was in there, and maybe it was a good thing.
APPRAISER:
Do you like it? Is that why you grabbed it?
GUEST:
I did, yes. I mean, I love it. I love the colors, I just loved how it looked, and it was the last minute yesterday saying I'm going to bring it here.
APPRAISER:
Okay, I'm glad you brought it in. Let me tell you a little bit about what I know about it. It's by Moser. And Ludwig Moser in 1857 opened his glassworks in the town of Karlovy Vary in what was Bohemia at that point, and is now in the Czech Republic. Mm-hmm. Now, his dates were... I think he was born in 1833 and died in 1916. Moser became known as one of the best glassworks in the world because of the high quality that you see here.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And I think this is from the late 19th century, probably the 1880s. Now, they marketed this stuff to very high-end customers at the time, so this was always perceived as pretty high-end stuff.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
We have all this wonderful gilding and enamel decoration. The insects all around, the floral decoration, just... and this is a cruet, by the way.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Let me just take off the stopper here. It has this wonderful insect decoration on the top of the stopper, which is just gorgeous.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Now also here, we have the number four on the bottom of the stopper. And if I pick up the cruet here, there's also the number four on the bottom of the cruet.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So that means pretty much that they started life together. It's not a marriage of a later cruet or a different cruet. Realistically, these are very highly sought after. I think the market for them is very strong. They're beautiful pieces. Do you have any idea of the value?
GUEST:
(sighs) I have no clue.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
No clue.
APPRAISER:
I think a good retail price on this would be $3,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my goodness, okay.
APPRAISER:
So retail value $3,000, yeah.
GUEST:
Okay. That's great, that's awesome.
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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Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.
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