Featured Silver (?) candlesticks

I just assumed it lead because its so heavy. The stick without it is very light.My thought was it was added to stabilize them. But thats all guessing.

 

Hellva find mr Johnny

Love the fact that you left them, then thought hang on a minute

Thank God for serious tarnish !!

 

Nice candlesticks, Johnny - ya done good! Looks like lead weighting to me, a good stabilizer, I've also seen thick steel plates, lead is soft, but doesn't rust...

~Cheryl

 

Congrats! They are beautiful!

 

At $3 each those would have been a steal and a half even if they were not silver.

 

Just reinforces the thrill of the hunt ! So rare these days to find much,what with the i-phone brigades .Makes the rare find that much more fun.

 

I was at a charity fundraiser today with just such phone looker-uppers. I got there first.(LOL)

 

I would have been doing the "Snoopy" happy dance in the aisle if I found those ...and I don't even collect silver !

 

That’s the great part about acquiring knowledge of good and valuable things. You don’t need to look something up to know it’s good. Still pays to do your research when you get it home but you can acquire things at a price you know is acceptable without that part much of the time. It’s particularly fantastic because many good old things aren’t marked or marked in a way obvious enough that those folks will know what it is. Even when 100 of them have been through and seen an item, if it doesn’t say “Sterling” or have a clear English language makers mark it will likely still be there until someone with actual knowledge walks by it. Whenever I get something good at a thrift store it’s unmarked or not clearly marked/easily ID’d. My only bigger piece of thrift silver ever was Loth marked. I was one of the look up every item people once. It’s amazing what one can learn in a short time span when they come down with a bad case of “the sickness” and turn a hobby into a main source of income.

 

The sale I was at, it was all going so cheap it was better to grab and run than stand there looking things up. THe one time really got a crazy money silver score (well before prices climbed) it was a French-hallmarked tray. Alas it probably ended up melted, but I knew what the marks meant and the estate sale runners didn't.

 

I found an eBay seller once that ran estate sales. They did a sale for an estate where the guy did a lot of work in the oil industry in Egypt. He had tons of really nice, some really heavy Egyptian silver. All hallmarked. I got the feeling the surviving family didn’t realize what it was and that they were selling it online rather than at the sale and maybe not cutting the family in on the proceeds. Not right obviously if my feeling was right. I did score some of the pieces at great prices because even ebayers didn’t want to pay what American sterling of comparable quality would go for. I don’t think I’ve ever scored big silver at an estate sale without sale runner knowing what it was. I got a few heavy pieces of Nordic made flatware once. Random other small bits, nothing big.

 

It happened at rummage sales later too a few times. Damaged pieces mostly, but solid silver. In one case the piece was Portuguese, and no way were you seeing those marks; I only had to see the metal. The other was clearly marked, but piled under a whole table of silverplate. No price either. "How about $6?" (yes please!)