Me & the wife are back from a week in sunny Miami Beach and the huge antique show. It runs five days and is, in a word, overwhelming. It takes us about two or three days just to walk through the show - when they say over 1,000 ventors are there, they mean real dealers, not trinket merchants. I’d estimate there were 75-100 high end silver dealers from all over the world present. Most all of them were very pleasant and willing to show their wares to those of us that appreciate silver. The sheer volume of high end silver is just outstanding.
We were shopping for a few items for our collection - a nice ornate water pitcher, a tea/coffee set, and a 3-tier cake stand that some call a dumbwaiter. The cake stand was nowhere to be found. The water pitchers were everywhere, but we passed on the one I really liked, a 1903 Gorham, just too pricey. We did buy a very nice American tea/coffee set, by Wallace, ca. about 1920, from a couple in California. Very nice set and nice folks to deal with. We also bought some gumbo spoons by Reed & Barton and Whiting. Also a couple of cake knives, one by Steiff and anothr old one by Wallace.
In any event, it was a great week to be in a very warm climate in a nice rental apartment with a flock of green parrots in the back yard. We found some very good restaurants as well.
Now for the bad news…when we left Miami yesterday it was 82 degrees and one hour and 20 minutes later we landed in New Orleans and it was 42 bone-chilling degrees. The plane was to turn around and fly back to Miami and me & the wife looked at each other and thought hard about going back…
The Miami Beach show is like going to a silver seminar. I need to buy a few lottery tickets for next year tho…
Uncle Vic