French Turquoise & Diamond Bracelet, ca. 1960
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GUEST:
It's been in my husband's family. His aunt passed away about 25 years ago, and she didn't have any children, so everything was passed down to her nieces and nephews. Everyone got to pick something they loved, and I love turquoise and gold and diamonds together, and so we were given this bracelet.
APPRAISER:
First of all, it's made out of 18-karat yellow gold. When you put it on the scale, I weigh in pennyweights, it's 42 pennyweights, so that's a little over two troy ounces of gold.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
In the piece. Now, the first design element we notice is what we call this fluted turquoise. You see how it’s got ridges almost like a pumpkin, or a piece of squash. Then, running down the middle, they put this little beaded or hobnail rim. So there's just a lot of design in that little bead. You move next to it, and you have here a style that really came about in the mid-'50s, early '60s, a Florentine finish. There's a special lining tool that puts this texture onto the bright gold. Then we take it one step even further and you have these diamond rondels. Did you count the diamonds recently?
GUEST:
Never. (laughter)
APPRAISER:
Well, just so you know, there's 99 of them.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
When you add them all up, there's three carats, total weight, in diamonds. It's strung on what we call "foxtail chain." It's a woven chain. It used to be used in this period, they still make it today, but you really only see jewelry made with it that's very high quality, and it's very, very, very strong. Today, a lot of jewelers will use a different type of chain, and I can tell you, it's always breaking.
GUEST:
(chuckles)
APPRAISER:
On the tongue-- this is the piece that you put into the other end to close the clasp. I had to use some high magnification to figure out what it said. It says, "Made in France." I date this somewhere in that 1955 to 1965 period. A value on this, as I see it right now, I think this is worth, at auction, $6,000 to $8,000.
GUEST:
Wow-- that's great. I love it, and so... that's amazing, I had no idea.
APPRAISER:
Well, I'm not finished, though.
GUEST:
You're not finished?
APPRAISER:
I want to get to the "but" and "if." I showed it to my colleagues at the table, and a lot of times there are pieces like this that are not signed by a particular jewelry-maker, but they did make them, things did get out unsigned. There's a strong chance this could be VCA, Van Cleef and Arpels. It has that look. It has all those elements, it has the quality.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
Like anything, how do you prove it? It's not signed "VCA." Sometimes, in our world, in the trade, we will take a bracelet like this, we will submit it for authentication. It's a lot of money, it could cost upwards of $2,000, which, right now, is 25% of the cost of the piece. And there's no guarantee. But let's say we sent it to them, and it came back, and it was authenticated as being theirs. Well, then, on something like this, the value would change, and it could easily double to $15,000 to $20,000. But that's a big if.
GUEST:
That would be amazing.
APPRAISER:
It's got that kind of quality. Really fabulous, thank you for bringing it in.
GUEST:
Oh, well, thank you. I'm really enjoying it, and I'm glad I brought it in.
APPRAISER:
You do wear it sometimes?
GUEST:
I wore it yesterday.
APPRAISER:
(chuckles): Oh...
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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