Italian Necklace & Bracelet, ca. 1810
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GUEST:
My parents were avid antique collectors, and my dad would always go to different shops in the city. And when he would see an interesting piece of jewelry for my mom, he would buy it.
APPRAISER:
Where did he find this piece?
GUEST:
He found it at a shop in Manhattan, I believe.
APPRAISER:
Oh, okay.
GUEST:
One of the interesting things about it is, it came with this letter.
APPRAISER:
And what does the letter say?
GUEST:
Well, the letter says that the piece was made in Canton, China, and the letter is from a jeweler in Boston, I believe.
APPRAISER:
And it's dated...
GUEST:
1912 or 1913. And the letter states that it was made about 60 years before that date. And it has, according to this, an interesting history. It went from Canton to Shanghai, and it was presented to a captain...
APPRAISER:
It's been around. Did it get to Brooklyn, or did it get to Long Island?
GUEST:
It got to Brooklyn first.
APPRAISER:
Brooklyn first. The letter is interesting, the pieces are very interesting, but the letter is wrong.
GUEST:
Uh-oh.
APPRAISER:
So the gentleman who wrote that had a good story, but he did not know. And somebody was a sea captain in that letter, so sea captains are notorious in finding heirlooms, in finding treasures and things like that. You have two bracelets, of course. They always came in pairs. This one over here, somebody stole the stones and made something else out of it way back when. When you got it, you got it that way.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
This one's intact. Now, your gold is filigree gold, made in Italy. It's Italian; it's not Chinese, And the work is extremely fine. And it's most likely-- I haven't tested it-- but it's most likely a bit higher than 18-karat gold. It's probably 20-, 22-karat gold. That's what they worked in. All the stones that surround this are made from lava. Each one of these pieces is, basically, a god or a famous person. Now, the age is all wrong, also. This is close to... going to be somewhere around 200 years old. 1812, 1810.
GUEST:
So it's... okay.
APPRAISER:
So that's where it comes in. And it's in great condition.
GUEST:
I wear it, I love it.
APPRAISER:
Oh, you do wear it.
GUEST:
I wear it, absolutely.
APPRAISER:
I love jewelry that's worn.
GUEST:
I wore the bracelet a few weeks ago.
APPRAISER:
This cannot be fixed. You got to find pieces of lava. It's very hard to fix it. But a piece like this, in today's market, can easily bring at auction somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000.
GUEST:
Terrific.
APPRAISER:
And on a good day, it could bring $6,000.
GUEST:
Wow.
Appraisal Details
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