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pencilvanian
1000+ Penny Miser Member
    
 USA
2209 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2007 : 20:41:48
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I am just wondering what is the most unusual precious metal find/purchase that other forum members have made.
A few days ago I purchased four corn on the cob holders. What is so strange about that? They were marked sterling (!)
I carefully scraped the surface on one of the holders in a unnoticable spot & used a silver test kit and it reacted to the metal indicating it is sterling and not silver plate. (If it was just plated it would not have changed color)
I had a book on objects made during the Victorian Age that described many if not all of the silver and silver plate objects produced during that gilded age. Examples, silver pen and pencil sets, silver letter openers, silver cigarette cases, silver card cases, silver handled blotters to dry ink on letters, silver button hooks for doing or undoing buttons on shoes, silver knife rests, to rest the knife and keep it off the table while serving dinner guests, silver napkin rings, silver lided bottles for perfune or powder, the list went on and on.
Anyone have an unusual object of silver or gold, or for that matter platinum, or even nickel (since it is a dollar an ounce now).
I think we all would like to hear of any unusual precoius metal object that has come into your posession.
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Frugi
Administrator
   

USA
627 Posts |
Posted - 01/23/2007 : 21:42:57
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About 6 months ago I was at my local flea market where I set up tables and sell junk and coins, and jewelry. Anyhow I was walking around looking at other seller's stuff when I came upon a large wooden box of antique dentist supplies (false teeth, replacement teeth, tools, molds, etc.) I looked through the box and found an antique plaster mold of someones mouth. It was cemented onto a copper contraption that was extremely old and definitely no longer used today. Anyhow I opened the mouth and saw a very large retainer made of a shiny silvery material. Asked how much-$10.00; I bought it. I removed the retainer easily and sold the plaster mold and the copper contraption to someone else for $10.00 without the retainer. I still havent had it tested but it wasnt tarnished at all and it gleams with brightness so it defintely isnt silver- it is either white gold or platinum. It weighs 14.6 grams. This was probably my most interesting find that I can think of right off the top of my head.
-Later that day I was showing my find to a jewelry seller at the market and I told him where the guy was. The jeweler came and found me later at my stand and showed me about a hundred or so tooth implants with metal posts on each one about the size of a lighter flint. He said, they were all gold, he also found a much smaller retainer like mine but much smaller.
Real Eyes Realize Real Lies
Buy Less. Work Less. Live More.
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Edited by - Frugi on 01/24/2007 14:27:18 |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
   

Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2007 : 00:26:53
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Best find ever: a big box in a small town coin store of mixed coins, including antique silver canadian nickels and dimes, all obviously priced at what their melt value had been several years ago. And the box was marked "everything in here, half price!" Most everything else in the box was crap and way over priced, but not the nickels and dimes. I doubled my collection of ancient silver canadian nickels over night, and for next to nothing. ;)
HoardCode0.1: M28/5CAON:CA5Ni27615:CA1Cu1200:CA100Ag345: CA10Ag250:CA50Ag100:CA25Ag30:CA500Ag48:US100Ag20:CA1000Ag16
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Edited by - Canadian_Nickle on 01/24/2007 00:28:47 |
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n/a
deleted
  

479 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2007 : 00:43:30
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For Christmas this year I was given a stocking stuffer made of Sterling. It is a "lemon sqweezer". As soon as you get lemon juice on it, is completely tarnishes. This silly little device is a testiment to the robber baron era. I can just see a waiter in a tuxedo putting a little wedge of lemon into this device and putting it onto a plate of fish and serving it to the aristocracy so that they don't have to touch the lemon or ever come into contact with any food of any kind.
The corn holders mentioned above are the same thing, an over the top extravegance of the elite.
My guess is that most of this stuff got melted in 1980.
Peace.
................................................. A billiard ball dropped from 1,362 feet (height of the South Tower) in a vacuum would require 9.22 seconds to hit the ground. How then did the towers collapse in 10 seconds and 11.4 seconds, and why has not one member of the mainstream media insisted on honest answers from the government in this regard? "The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous [that] he cannot believe it exists." - J. Edgar Hoover |
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
  

USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2007 : 07:13:28
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It wasn't my find, but a co-worker a couple of years ago was going through some boxes of junk that our laboratory inherited from another laboratory. I say junk, which most of it was, but going through this stuff we occasionally would find equipment or apparatus that we could use or rehabilitate. Well, one day he came across a bunch of platinum crucibles! He did the honest thing and turned them in to the lab management.
Metalophile |
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
  

USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2007 : 07:43:21
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That story reminds me that I think there are some nickel crucibles among our surplus junk. I think I'll go retrieve them and find a place for them in our lab, even though we have no current use for them. Anyone check the price of nickel lately? $17.95/lb. as of this morning.
Metalophile |
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davycoppit
Penny Pincher Member
 

USA
126 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2007 : 20:46:39
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Durring the summer I demo old houses. Im just wating for the day I find some precious metals. It seems if you keep your eye out its just a matter of time before you find something. nice topic
david |
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Canadian_Nickle
Penny Hoarding Member
   

Canada
938 Posts |
Posted - 01/24/2007 : 22:02:08
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Yeah, inside walls and in foundations and stuff. I know some guys who bought an old house to turn into an office, and when they tore one wall down they found about $3000 face in pre-64 canadian silver dollars, much of it nice a minty, too.
HoardCode0.1: M28/5CAON:CA5Ni27615:CA1Cu1200:CA100Ag345: CA10Ag250:CA50Ag100:CA25Ag30:CA500Ag48:US100Ag20:CA1000Ag16
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