If you were a reasonably experienced eBay seller, that would probably be the way to go. eBay would take 13.5% out of your hide (actually a bit more because they charge final value fees on the shipping and sales tax). But you’d have trouble selling if you have no eBay reputation score. Buyers are leery of a seller with no track record, especially for higher-end stuff.
The traditional auction houses would take more. Besides the seller commission (negotiable), they tend to lard you up with fees for photographing the item, for listing it, for sending out the auction catalog, and on and on. There’s probably a fee for turning on the lights in their offices in the morning.
Benjamin Smith III was the eldest son of Benjamin Smith II who made your hexagonal dish. He apprenticed to his father 1808, free 1821. 1st mark with his father 1816. 2nd mark alone. 3rd mark, 2 sizes. He took over his father’s business such as it was and used many of the same castings.
Unlike his dad he was pleasant enough to get on well with most folk and avoided the trap of committing all his work to one retailer who either took flagrant advantage of him or enabled him to make a living at all, given his lack of PR capability.
Keeping your dish is far and away the best option. Right now the market for large items of collector silver is remarkably driven by spot silver price rather than intrinsic value.
So despite higher spot, the values are poor from a collector’s point of view.
Most buy based on three rather simple yardstick. Can we sell it for substantially more – at least 40% more, is it useful and decorative and will it attract attention?
Single dishes, even single dishes by a top maker – some say the top maker – have limited market scope and capital upside to date has been poor. This will change and all you need do with a $40 investment is sit and wait!
I’m in the keep it camp. Very handsome piece. Crying out for a Beef Wellington. And not to quibble with the eminent Mr. Wilson, but I am quite partial to the dark patina in the grooves of the elegant gadrooning, and I would worry that beavering away at it to remove the dark matter might cause some scratching. And who knows, maybe there are traces of some gravy spilled by the Iron Duke himself? Great find, congrats.
I am not suggesting doing anything that would scratch simply use dish soap to remove accumulated dirt and grease. I have been employing soft brushes and dish soap for this job for decades and no abrasion so far. It’s also a very good way of getting the same rather disgusting gunk out of hall marks so you can actually read them.
I have illustrated this forum with a number of items treated in this fashion and nobody has commented they are abraded in any fashion.
I used to use an admixture of commercial silver dip and soap for the task but worry the effects on humans of the former substance has ended that.
And patina, where it exists at all, is the consequence of decades of “butler polish” not the end result of footmen and scullery maids not washing the silver after they have polished it so food and drink served in it doesn’t taste of silver polish abandoned in cracks and crevasses.
I like my beef Wellington to taste of beef not hundred year old dirt and dried cleaning chemicals.
For silver cleaning, I use products made by qualified chemical laboratories. Home remedies are proven and effective, but scientific knowledge is paramount.
Which I cannot say about modern medicine, which I do not trust at all.
