Garage sale purchase of a $10 Cruet Set turns into sale of $850 antique. Quick and easy identification using Marks4Antiques.com can help sellers correctly identify an antique, bringing higher prices and faster sales to sellers.
News-Antique.com - Oct 19,2007 - San Francisco, California - October 19, 2007 - Just imagine how ecstatic Marla Stickland was when the tarnished and dusty little Huilier (Cruet Set) she picked up for a mere $10 at a neighborhood garage sale, turned out to be an important antique. She had no idea that such a dull looking item, when cleaned revealed a maker's mark and a bunch of other symbols that once deciphered by Marks4Antiques.com, turned into a sale of $850.
Not only were these marks totally nonsensical to her at the time, but they were dispersed throughout the piece. They were interspersed at various parts of the underside, and looked like initials with a flower, a woman's head, a bearded man's face and other strange looking ciphers. The first thing Marla thought was to use Google and search for all these symbols. But how do you even begin describing all these little images using words and terms, most of which can only be communicated using convoluted and long sentences? She was stuck.
After spending countless frustrating hours On-line, but driven by her intuition that there must be a story in these silver marks, she stumbled upon Marks4Antiques.com. She knew that her cruet set was made mostly of silver, so she thought "if I could at least identify the silver marks, I may have a starting point for more research...". She was right!
Marks4Antiques.com displays all antiques marks in shape categories. So, if a mark looks like a ship, then all marks that look like a ship or a boat, are displayed on one page. If a mark looks like a crown, all marks that look like a crown are listed on one page. The same with animals, flowers, crests, letters and a number of other shape categories. This pictorial method makes it easy to find antiques marks by just looking at images and comparing them.
Well, lo and behold, there they were! All of her marks were listed in their shape categories for silver marks and Marla was able to quickly determine that her $10 Huilier was actually made in France during the early 18th century and specifically signed by one of the most sought after silversmiths of that era, Paul De Lamerie ca 1713 - 1732.
Furthermore, the other silver symbols were the .950 Sterling Silver mark for France during that period and another mark was like a "stamp of approval" by the Association of Silver & Gold Smiths of Paris, France. Marla sold this cleaned up and now identified Huilier for $850. What a find!!
"We get a lot of similar success stories from many of our members" said Lisa Marion of Marks4Antiques.com. "Most of our members are online sellers, antiques dealers or appraisers. We also have several reputable auction houses that constantly use our databases of antiques marks, whether it is for ceramics marks or silver & jewelry marks, because they know that identifying and describing items accurately, increases their chance of attaining higher prices during a sale".
