First one - badly rubbed London marks

The maker's name isn't on here, but is that a C with George III? The spoon is a standard fiddleback.

 

The letter C was used in both 1798 and 1818 (during George III's reign.) The 1818 C had a bulbous end to the top with a thinner line at the bottom, but the 1798 is even more different than this one (Blame it on the wear.) Both dates had a crowned leopard (check) and a George III facing right (check) although illustrations and examples of his head show a little bump at the nape of his neck for the "pigtail" on his wig and it's not there.

So you have a maker's mark somewhere?

 

Not even a whisper. Or a whisker. Maybe the leopard batted it under a table?

 

Darn.

I do have to say that the "rubbing" is unusually even on this set of marks. Normally you see more wear in some places or marks than on others.

Can we see a picture of the whole thing (both sides?)

 

Once I have some better light tomorrow. It's almost dark here and I'm supposed to go back out again.

 

@evelyb30, if I am correct, are you looking to see if you can see a 'pigtail' on the bottom figure in the mark, in the TOP image???? IF SO, I took THAT image, inverted it, brightened & contrasted it, then ran it through my TOPAZ Gigapixel program.....and to ME...it looks there IS a 'pigtail' .....but I could also be full of Hogwash.....I leave it up to you.....to begin with it's a pretty washed out mark!!! I do hope it's what you were looking for and that it helps....if not...so be it!!

 

@evelyb30, also, JUST plain not doing anything but contrasting and darkening a wee bit I think shows a bit of a ponytail too...as marked by the arrow......NO fancy enhancements! It's actually clearer than my enlarged image above!!!

 

I'm seeing a pigtail too. Didn't George III have the pigtail the entire time?

 

Yes, he did. There were 2 different lengths if you can believe the examples in some references. But the improved version of the photo by Aquitaine makes it clearer than the earlier ones.

 

If I were the betting type, I'd say 1818 from what we can see. The only other C that gets close is from the 1770s, before the Sovereign's head mark was used.

 

That's where I was going with my earlier post about the possible C shapes and which one was more likely.

 

Thanks. Now if only we knew whodunnit.

 

The maker's mark would have been struck prior to assay, yours is virtually worn to nothing, but still faintly visible above the other marks in your first pic - they are 1818 hallmarks. In 1810, London started orienting their marks, on flatware only, to read vertically, except for the lion-passant - it was done to keep the marks from being transfered to larger pieces, hallmarks oriented that way should not be found on items other than flatware.

1818:



1798:



~Cheryl

 

Somebody polished the sucker a bit, one might say... and then some damnfool FILED the poor thing testing for silver.

 

Two centuries of polishing with Lord-knows-what can cause considerable wear, but what a moronic move to file it like that (is there one up at the top too?)

I once saw a guy with a file and bottle of acid testing pieces in silver bins at Renninger's, when I confronted him, he snarled, "Back off, b**ch." I've known a lot of the silver dealers for years, and started telling everyone to watch for him, didn't see it happen, but was told security caught him and escorted him off property (should have called the police, to my thinking) - his argument was that he had the right to see if an item was genuine or not, yet he hadn't bought anything at all...

~Cheryl

 

And with an attitude like that ... probably never will at Renninger's at least!

The same file-happy idiot apparently file tested marked silverplate too; I found a baby set at the thrift today with the same file marks. It's marked silverplate for a reason, y'moron!