Featured Garbage, ancient proto money, broken jewelry..?

This came in mixed estate bag. I had posted some nice silver prayer beads that were also in the bag. This piece appears to be silver to me. It’s quite heavy for its size. The estate was interesting enough to speculate that this item could be interesting. I keep wanting to think it’s ancient proto money even though that’s probably unlikely. I even can see a dolphin in there. I think it was the Greece area that used dolphin proto money. There’s was all bronze I think though. This could be a broken attempt at making a brooch or some other home spun piece of junk too. Any thoughts?

 

It's a piece of something; have you tested the metal yet?

 

I really never test silver. Unless it’s an object that’s either going to be sterling or nothing and I don’t mind putting the acid directly on it. The color the acid can turn for varying purities of silver confuses me. I don’t like putting acid on most things and just scraping a little on a stone isn’t super helpful for many items. I should probably get better at it I guess.

 

I'd scratch this on the stone, and hit the scraping with 18k gold acid. If the scrape is silver the metal will turn white and "curdle" up off the stone. Silver acids go bad quickly and can be hard to read.

 

I’ll try it out once I remember where I put this. The other thing that confuses me is that there seems to be different types of acid. The ones I have didn’t come with good instructions or I lost them. So when I look them up online they seem to differ between acids or acid providers. I’ll try your instructions though. Gold seems so much easier as far as testing. I wish the machines were more affordable!

 

The electronic ones are Nut$o prices. Good gem testers too. I have a cheap diamond tester that gives me enough information to start from, but it's nothing to recommend to anyone else. The acids? Look for Youtube videos; the instructions are out there. The 18k will eat right through pot metal or pewter. If it's lower grade silver the mark will "curdle" at a slower rate, and with practice it's good enough for a guesstimate at metal fineness.

If you scratch something and the scratch looks reddish, odds are it's brass or copper and plated with something else.

 

Thanks for the tips. I have looked up instructions. The problem is that they vary widely. Either the people giving instructions don’t know what they are doing (which I think is the case in some instances and why I don’t trust most people’s claims of acid testing) or there are different types of acid and blue for silver acid A is positive while blue for silver acid B is negative and brown is positive and so on.

 

Ooh interesting, yeh that’s a possibility!

 

You've just hit on why many regular sellers/buyers don't bother with the silver acid. It goes "bad" quickly and the tests aren't that reliable.

 

i think mine was actually bad from the verry beginning. Everything i tested was hard to read,
But how log does the silver acid normally stay good? And how long does gold acid stay good

 

Silver acid? Not long enough that I used it more than once. Gold? I'm still using the 10 and 14k acids I bought years ago. Ran out of the 18k since I use it on silver, and had to reorder.

 

Ok so I did the 18k test and it did indeed turn white and “curdle”. I used a nickel and clad quarter as controls and they did not turn white. So looks like we have silver if the test is good! It’s 2.3oz so even if it were scrap it was a good score in a $5 bag full of other good stuff. Maybe one day I’ll get the right eyes on it.

 

I found this humerus.

 

$40+ in scrap weight for five bucks? I'd say you did OK.

 

Lolll

 

Hopefully if it is indeed quite old it will be worth much more. Sold a pair of pistol grips that was in the bag for $35 already. Have another pair of grips that was in it that I’ll get $25 or so for probably. There was a neat matchbook that will get $10 or so. Vintage guitar picks that will get $20 at least. Silver prayer beads I posted on here that I think are actually quite valuable potentially. Could be a good bag all in all! It was priced at $15 originally. I was shocked no one bought it for that. Last min of sale I got it for $5.

 

DANG! You definitely did OK.

 

A very strange collection of oddments in that bag! Shame the item has lost its provenance. If it is as old as it looks, possibly ancient, then a museum might still be interested. Definitely not ancient Greek money, as you said that was bronze, and also tiny, fairly flat and made in the shape of dolphins. This looks much more snake-like and mysterious. I hope you can identify it and report back!