Any value in this old?
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I’m going to presume you looked them up and discovered three things: The pair of sugar tongs are electro-plate and made in Sheffield and that the marks are not dis-similar to those used by William Parkin and later in the early days of Parkin & Marshall?
You might also have noted these trademarks (not hallmarks) use a crown which was outlawed on silverplate in 1896, not to protect the sovereign but Sheffield’s entitlement to use it as hall or guild mark.
How they got away with this lese majeste is explained in a possibly apocryphal story about the Sheffield and Birmingham Assay masters meeting in a pub called the Crown and Anchor and each grabbing one of the pub’s dual symbols as their respective town guild mark.
But to value and your question. Ebay sells or attempts to sell a lot of plate tongs so that will give you a price guide, bearing in mind anything you see listed is not sold.
Its melt value is literally not worth the energy used to separate the microns of silver from the brass and sometimes copper underneath. So its value to you depends on if you are a consumer of lump sugar and if so what for?
If you are not a diabetic yet, do take afternoon tea and cannot yet afford a silver tea set then these might be of passing utilitarian value. Otherwise its all “Robertson’s Jam”.
You may not be ancient enough to recall the Robertson’s Jam ad campaign where in the top of each pot of jam came a paper “golliwog” (Their term not mine) and you collected 10 of them and they sent you a card to stick them in.
The ad campaign survived in one form or another through the 20th century but added little to the rather indifferent spread on offer the fruit for which came ostensibly from Seville which ironically had once been conquered by the depicted Africans and held for the better part 500 years.
CRWW
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Thank you for your response. I have to admit that I was taken aback by this and did not expect it. Thank you for getting back to me and explaining. Your knowledge is just something else, not from this planet. Best wishes.
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The value in old stuff is the stories it tells. Doesn’t matter if its the Mona Lisa or a pair of sugar tongs. It’s the story that sells it.
What do you suppose would happen if you gave Mona your tongs? What would she make of them?
Sugar was available in Florence in 1503, but it was a rare, expensive luxury imported from the Middle East and Atlantic islands, often treated as a spice or medicine. It was primarily used by the wealthy including her family for banquets and elaborate edible sculptures to display status.
So no lump sugar.
I discovered the modern bride has no idea what to do with them either when, lacking inspiration for a wedding present, I presented a pair of rather elaborate tongs to a happy couple of my acquaintance together with a case of champagne.This was the sixties. Champagne was still a breakfast drink with an orange chaser
In due course I received a polite, I thought rather restrained, note of thanks and thought nothing more of it until the following October when, invited to a shooting lunch at their home, I had occasion to explore the gents lavatory tucked away discreetly in the remote passages of a rather decent Yorkshire manor house her papa had fronted up.
There I found my tongs on the end of a blue ribbon adjacent to the toilet bowl.
That, I had to confess, was not a use I had considered for them but the story still works.
CRWW
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Yes, I think it’s a good story 
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Lmao your stories are amazing.
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