Help identifying Sterling silver heart trinket box

[ParadiseSales]

[Bartholomew]

I won’t even lift a finger.

[Guildhall]

You have to raise a finger if you are going to wag it at her!

But this Forum, working for a very successful commercial venture, in this case a Gainsville, Fla .auction house — Paradise Estate Sales – rep’ed here by Sue Bazin is a very different proposition to giving an amateur collector a heads up.

Paradise Estate Sales - ,

Every time I go to an auction house to buy silver, which is about once a month, I get charged about 30% for the auctioneer to tell me what I am buying and to provide some sort of very limited surety I won’t get screwed. Since on average I find the auction house, and here I am talking major houses, makes four mistakes per silver auction, and since I am very well paid by one auctioneer for it to avoid this sort of negligence – one rather wonders why exactly one should work at all for another, leave alone for free.

Your concern is she cannot take silver mark pictures – and in fairness they are notoriously difficult even if you have the proper equipment and the patience to do it properly. Mine is more if I am getting charged silly fees by auction houses for them to tell me information which, if it is wrong, they escape liability for under the terms of local auction legislation while at the same time duplicate charging the vendor sale fees or more, why exactly are we bothering?

I suppose one answer might be if we don’t they will be even more likely to mislead the end buyer and since the entire purpose of this website is to instil faith in silver product, but in this case….?

CRWW

[Bartholomew]

Chester import mark, 1907?

Hanau?

"Hanau silver was largely imported in UK between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Berthold Muller was an import firm, who distributed a lot of Neresheimer silver - see John Culme: The Directory of Gold-and Silversmiths, Jewellers and Allied Traders 1838-1914, Vol.1 page, page 335. The firm changed its name 1915 to Berthold Miller and was listed as wholesale silversmiths and jewellers, antique reproduction in silver, ivories, miniatures, enamels, and so forth.

Another importer of Hanau silver was J.G.Piddington which was independent of Berthold Muller and an import firm in their own right, see Culme, page 423 under John George Smith &Co. The shipping and forwarding business was founded in 1849, the firm was a partnership between J.Friend and J. Piddington. The grandson of Piddington, John G.Smith jr. took the surname of his grandfather in 1900. J.G. Smith & Co are noted to have imported a great deal of silver, apparently an important part of their business until 1939. Many of these items, decorative in nature, to be of German origin. A privately printed and illustrated history of this firm exists, called ‘Vitesse, The Story of Continental Express’, published in 1949.

(information from www.ASCASonline.org /Dorothea Burstyn)".
Hallmarks of Hanau silver

And I wasn’t supposed to write anything…

Berthold Muller - Silver made by Berthold Muller - I.Franks Antique Silver

German Pierced Silver Box. Neresheimer & Sohne, Hanau (Berthold Muller

[ParadiseSales]

Thanks for the info…these marks were poorly imprinted and small so they were very hard to get clear photographs. I usually spend an hour doing my own research but had no luck, so then I fall back on these forums to ask for help and I thank you. The unproductive comments have their own value I suppose too, but a little elaboration might go a long way. We do want to represent our clients items as well as we can, so once again it is appreciated.

[Bartholomew]

U welcome, Sue!

[Guildhall]

You and I are in complete agreement; “a little elaboration would go a long way”. In the mean time your bidder terms page is completely blank:

https://floridasonlineauctions.com/BidderTerms?PartyId=16

As for “productivity”, again complete agreement. We want informed silver buyers and sellers. Auction houses want profit.

CRWW

[ParadiseSales]

Thanks for update…will let the website admin know, but usually the bidder terms are stated separately on each auction and our different for each auctioneer (i think there’s 15 of us now sharing same online house). Never seen that page before, but will let admin know.

[ParadiseSales]

ah, just noticed you have to have bidder account and be logged in then it shows.

[Guildhall]

Not telling someone what the terms of the agreement are until after they have signed up for an account, which presumably contains said terms, would seem to be the ultimate in “non-elaboration” and very definitely “counter-productive”.

Given the house charges both the buyer and the seller fees and given the stated reason for buyer fees is to provide them with a degree of certainty about the product they are seeking to purchase, often at distance and without the opportunity to view in person, how much are those undisclosed fees and what do your as-yet-undiscovered terms say about return of bid amounts in the event the bidder discovers, on receipt of goods, they are not as represented, and to what extent is any duty to return funds under those circumstances mitigated by statutory legislation in your jurisdiction regarding general liability of auctioneers?

Any light you can shed on any of this regarding your own practices or the general practices of your business will be of great interest to the Forum’s readers and contributors.

For the most part state rules governing auction houses were promulgated in a time when auctions were something you attended in person and had, as a buyer, an opportunity to inspect the goods.

Today, where often buyers are often at great distances, sometimes not even in the same country or on the same continent, it is impractical to conduct personal inspection and the buyer relies far more on photographs and written descriptions from the House.

Since all this company buys is silver and since most silver is marked or stamped as to quantum of precious metal, maker and origin, and since the company has been doing the same thing for about sixty years, we rarely make mistakes.

But as can be seen from the inquiries of this forum and elsewhere, that same fairly high rate of goods reliability is not the universal experience. Something this forum is asked about a product listed on an auction site and we discover and forewarn of discrepancies and other times its an ex post facto experience for the dolorous buyer.

What of these comments applies to silver and other precious metal objects, applies even more often where goods crafted of wood are on offer.

The number of items of furniture listed as “18th century” or “Georgian” which are in fact Victorians copies is overwhelming and often quite beyond either the buyer or the seller’s capability to tell the difference without physical inspection of materials comprising the product and even then.

We deal in 18th century and earlier furniture and remind ourselves and our buyers at that point in history 98% of all European homes had very limited, very crude furnishings – a table, a few chairs, perhaps a bed and some form of storage.

The furniture everybody seeks, so called “Chippendale “ or “Sheraton” and even “Hepplewhite” is almost never made by the cataloguer responsible for design and in most cases not even made contemporaneous with the style it emulates.

To put it another way each year more period furniture is sold at auction or otherwise than would have existed to furnish the two per cent of the population in period Europe which had any furniture at all leave alone something fancy enough to appeal to the modern buyer.

I think in my life I have seen 12 Chippendale chairs. They were all in the house they were originally provided to. None of them were for sale.

The best I can hope for in the trade is a contemporary copy by a competent local or city craftsman. A Gillow piece perhaps.

But the number of Chippendale 18th century chairs on offer by auction houses continues unabated;

Truth is many of these items, made perhaps in this century are better crafted, more durable, and better fit for purpose than something produced 250 or more years ago.

But that is hardly the point is it?

CRWW

[Bartholomew]

A question without context: can antique identification, something like what we do here, be a paid service? Something like the work of an appraiser.
I dare say that several people here are doing a great job (my innate lack of modesty prevents me from omitting my name).

[Guildhall]

Short answer is yes. Watch for blatant errors to be made by sellers and then buy if the errors are in your favor and nobody else can be bothered. It is very difficult to do without physical attendance at auctions.

We have bought 17th and 18th century ‘sticks which someone has stuck wood bases on obscuring marks and paid Victorian ‘stick prices. We have bought Russian samovars blackened with age which turned out to be soldi silver hot water tea urns of the 18th century and we have bought damaged goods which can be expertly repaired and sold with full disclosure at a modest profit.

I tend not to do this with private sellers, it’s too easy, but auctioneers who take from both buyer and seller and often know about their offerings only what the assignor told them which is usually what the seller told them a few decades ago, are fair game.

Some auction houses not only auction product they also tell their customers they are experts at valuation and offer their paid services for the same. Their valuer very often turns out to be a recent graduate of an arts history class in the local college and, like a thousand monkeys and a thousand typewriters sometimes gets it right.

Getting qualified as an appraiser is fairly simple. Getting accepted by insurance companies who depend on your services to pay out and underwrite is much more challenging.

CRWW

[red6]

All I can say is Amen to this.

[ParadiseSales]

Signing up for an account is administered by the company that owns the website, and they have their own terms of use. Once you have an account then you have access to individual auctions that each have their own terms of agreement. Hopefully that answers your questions and please let me know if I can help further. I truly believe that forums can be a great service to consumer and seller alike, and I hope I can convey my thanks to this forum enough how much I appreicate them.

As for dishonesty in auctions, intentional or not, I can only answer for our company…we try to be as accuarate as possible, and always appreciate constructive feedback. We don’t have time or energy to defend the whole industry, but hopefully there are enough good online auctioneers that the bad ones don’t make the whole barrel stink.

[Guildhall]

Thank you for courtesy of your reply. To be clear I had not suggested dishonestry, more negligence where data provided by consignors is simply re-interated without independent checks.

Nor had I asked you to mount any defence for the whole industry. Indeed it is your presumption not mine it needs defending at all. I was merely looking for some sort of ethical basis for double dipping – taking commissions from both buyers and sellers if nothing is in fact provided as surety to the buyer.

But, since you prefer to stay with the specific: suppose I was to buy the exhibited items off you, my colleague having provided you with the data on it which you would presumably reiterate, should I still be contractually bound to pay you the buyer’s commission and how much would it be?

CRWW

[Bartholomew]