Thanks to my rather whiney last post, I have begun to catch up on my duties: I balanced every form of money we have, got Head Trip over to help me with my newest project (The Just-In-Case-the-World-Doesn't-End Yardsale ... gotta get a better name ... due on various auction sites Labor Day 2012), and took huge steps toward my new bedroom and office projects. Haven't weeded as much as I wanted to (rain, rain, rain!) but obviously I'm going in the right direction because the radar, she is unfogging!
And because I found something very, very good, I wanted to say a serious and heartfelt "thank you." No, not to you, the reader (though I do thank you ... you one person, you) but to the anonymous person who put a cool yard sale find into my local consignment shop yesterday because she didn't believe what she had, and to all the people who saw it in the case and looked at the description on the tag ... instead of at the hallmarks ... on the
necklace and bracelet set ...
I'm not being snotty or superior - I almost understand how even the most hardened of treasure hunters would pass this one up. And for all I know, even though it was dated yesterday it could've gone out today before the store opened. But I wanted to put together a little checklist for the next time you find something like this at a yard sale (or anywhere else):
1. The first thing I always do is (duh) look - not just for marks, because gold isn't always marked in this country (and many times the marks are hidden in the design anyway). No, I look for "tells" like places where plating has chipped or worn off, or thin prongs holding stones in place instead of thicker blob-like fingers, or even bits that look like pools of molten metal (which often are places where the plating is about to flake away). I also look for scrapes to see if it's darker beneath, or lighter. Even hairline scratches to see if it's scratching like gold would. This was marked "10K" in all the right places, but since it was a herringbone necklace and bracelet set, it was hard to deal with scratches. A magnet revealed the clasps were metal, but that's not unusual (though a first strike).
2. Then I feel the piece. Gold has a soft, buttery, almost fluid feel (especially with chains). This set was stiffer than those I've held in the past (strike two). But it was also 10K, not 14K, which is what I tend to favor. Oddly, since it was wide, I also hesitated because this implied newer rather than older - the style itself is maybe 10 years old, and it's lower-carat, which normally appears with this higher-end, more elgant stuff only when gold is expensive. (I find CZs and other total crap stones in 14K all the time from an era when gold was $200 to $400 an ounce, so 18K was the norm for good stones. I even have a pair of earrings someone thought was costume because the ball and hook part were clearly tarnished, and obviously plated. But the rest of wasn't. The post and the ruby-laden bobble that dangled from the stud setup is all 14K. A jewelry guy explained that a hollow sphere is much harder to form than a straight post, especially with soft metal, so in times of low gold prices makers just attached the cheaper plated stuff to the heavy, cast gold bits. You can feel the difference between the parts. So I pulled it off the crappy studs and put it onto a shield-fronted pair of wires. They are
amazing!)
3. Then I
think about what I see and feel. While we all know to avoid certain questionable markings, we frequently assume "Italy" is a safe one. Not so. In fact, at the last jewelry show I attended
every single dealer I know had at least one "Italy" gold horror story. However, the norm for fakes these days seems to be 14K. Plus, these pieces had a model number, one which turned up on lots of older posts when I Googled it. While fakes have always been with us, it's only been worth that amount of risk to sell them in the last two or three years. (Maybe strike two-and-a-half.)
4. All this (nowadays) takes maybe 30 seconds (you wish, right?). In the end, it all comes down to how much the seller wants for the piece. On Saturday, I spent nearly 10 minutes with steps 1-3 at a yard sale that had clearly seen a lot of traffic. This one necklace was still there, probably because the price tag was $200. It was marked "Italy" and "14K" (faint on one clasp) and the dealers' stories rang in my ears. I fondled and mentally weighed (I don't pull out a scale at a yard sale) and then fondled some more, looked at the dwindling crowds, and asked if she could come down. She did, eventually hitting the top end of my range. I bought it. (On my way out, I saw a smaller household piece and went back to pay the $1 only to hear the seller telling her mom about my purchase and hearing surprise and pleasure at how much she'd gotten for it. I'm glad. I did the same after I got home and weighed it. Almost squealed like a little girl.) Rule of thumb, however, is if it's really, really cheap just buy the damned thing and worry about it later. Despite the high strikes, I didn't hesitate on today's pieces.
5. Then there's after-buy. I have a compulsive need to know, so I test stones with mad amounts of things, and gold with acid and/or electronics. The necklace from today looked ... ravaged; three sections of the herringbone were twisted and crimped. I decided to try that bit first. It wasn't encouraging. But the bits were spiky, and my electronic tester needs a good surface, so I put it on the flat bit. Great once, but lousy in a second place. I sagged, then remembered. DUH! It's Italian! With "Italy" pieces, I always, always,
always use my trusty pink eraser on the gold first because they're frequently coated with a waxy substance to keep it from scratching in transit. The gel-based tester doesn't do wax! It gave me no trouble at the "erased" parts, but I was leery because of the weird readings, so I went to acid. Acid doesn't give a rat's ass about wax, but it will give a higher reading with heavily plated things sometimes so after you rub the piece on the stone, you have to look at the resulting scrape on the gold to see any variation in color, then maybe even dunk it in one level higher acid to see if it turns the cut green. That means plate. (It it doesn't discolor it doesn't mean it's real, just a much better chance - nothing is foolproof.) Today's bits passed with flying colors!
Okay, the moral of this rather involved story is this: If it's cheap and/or you love it, buy it! But if you decide to sell it, don't assume it's crap before you test the bejeebies out of it. If you don't, you won't price it well, and someone like me will pay $1 per gram for your castoffs.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you ... !!!!
