James Cohen Brass Skeleton Clock, ca. 1865
Watch
GUEST:
Well, it was my father's, and that's where I got it. Pop came home from a Sunday drive back in the mid-1950s and had this clock with him. He'd been to an auction and brought it home, and it was part of his collection. It had a glass dome on it, and when he was cleaning the clock one day, he cleaned the dome first, then took the clock to the kitchen to work on it. My sister walked in, and he had done such a good job of cleaning the dome, she didn't see it, sat down on the chair, and shattered it, so...
APPRAISER:
Oops.
GUEST:
Yeah, "oops" is right, big oops.
APPRAISER:
This is great, what you've brought here, the - the catalogue where he originally purchased the clock from the Victor Gilbert collection, and there is Victor Gilbert with this clock.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
It's a great photograph, and clearly it was his prized piece in the collection. So what we have here is a mid-19th century skeleton clock. It was a tremendous amount of work to make a clock like this, and there are standard examples, there are typical skeleton clocks that we frequently see. This is not one of those. It's very unusual, almost like a one-off piece. These columns are very unusual. If we spin it around a little bit, you can see the clock movement in there. For the clock people out there, it's a double fusee movement, time and strike. And this very unusual pendulum with these knurled adjustments, they look like. So a very interesting clock. The bell is… bent on the top, that's something that could be restored pretty easily by a clockmaker. And the maker's name is here on the dial, but there's nothing listed, I couldn't find him…
GUEST:
Yeah, I couldn’t either.
APPRAISER:
…So maybe he just made one clock? May have been a jeweler. Any idea what this clock might be worth today?
GUEST:
Well, Pop bought it in the mid-'50s for $500.
APPRAISER:
That was a lot of money.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
This is a clock that even in this condition I think would sell at auction in the $4,000 range.
GUEST:
Oh, okay. That's great. And if I get it repaired?
APPRAISER:
Quite a bit more. I could see this fully restored selling for $7,500, in that range.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So well worth restoring.
GUEST:
Okay, well that's good to know, thank you.
APPRAISER:
Thanks for bringing it in.
GUEST:
Pop would be glad to hear that. Thank you very much.
Appraisal Details
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