By ops@our-hometown.com | on September 15, 2022

ABOVE: This handleless English teacup dates to the early 19th century. RIGHT: This silver overlay pitcher dates from the early 20th century. SCOTT SIMMONS / FLORIDA WEEKLY

You just have to know how to look for it.

I was thinking about that during a recent excursion to a Goodwill store on my way home from work.

I walked among the housewares and saw lots of the workaday — Corelle and melamine dinnerware, aluminum pots and pans, a variety of crystal — including a nice stemware pattern I’d never seen before that Replacements Ltd. dubbed “by Unknown Manufacturer.”

There are a lot of mysteries.

Then I stopped. There was a handleless china teacup sitting on the shelf. It was delicate white porcelain with a handpainted floral motif.

It was unmarked, save some numbers on the bottom. But I knew it was English and I knew it easily was 200 years old. The husband of my Cub Scout den mother collected such pieces a half-century ago.

I picked it up and marveled at it, then set it down and walked away. What was I going to do with a single teacup?

The next day, I stopped by the store and saw a fellow frequent shopper.

Then he told me that a couple weeks before, he’d found a small Tiffany sterling dish for a song.

“It was so covered in tarnish they never saw the mark.”

But he recognized the shape and knew where to look for the mark.

I showed him the teacup, which was 99 cents, marveled at its venerable age and I bought — housewares were 50% that day to members of Goodwill’s discount club, so it cost me a whopping 52 cents with tax. I can use it to serve lemon or lime slices when I set up a bar and serve up 200 years of history along with a cocktail. How cool is that?

Knowing where to look is important.

The week before that, I picked up a crystal martini pitcher with a heavy silver overlay design.

Everything about the piece spoke to its craftsmanship, from the applied glass handle, to the beautifully polished pontil at its bottom — that’s where the glassblower snapped it after shaping it.

I searched the overlay for a mark and found it near the top, where I could just make out the 925/1000 mark, indicating sterling, and a hallmark that had been polished smooth enough that I found it too difficult to read. With my discount club price break, it came to $4 with tax.

Later, I visited the website www. silvercollection.it, and determined that mark was from the Alvin Co., which patented a process for encasing glass in silver, then cutting it away to reveal the glass beneath and engraving the silver with elaborate designs. So reported a trade publication, The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, in its Jan. 18, 1893, edition.

If you see a metal piece marked .925, that means it’s sterling; pieces marked .800 also are solid silver, just with slightly more alloys than sterling. It’s all good. Pieces may be marked on the bottoms or, in the case of a pitcher or a cup, at the rim near the top of a handle.

An antiques dealer friend from Jacksonville tells me one of the vendors in his mall recently bought a sterling coffee and tea service that had been painted flat black; its tray had chalk writing on it. But that didn’t obliterate the marks or its scrap value — silver always is worth its weight in, well, scrap.

Buy a good-quality silver paste at the grocery and pieces should polish up — don’t use dips because they can strip away patina and leave a cloudy finish.

Remember: Your smartphone is your friend. Today, it is easy to Google china and silver marks to get an idea of an object’s age and material. And tools, like the photo search tool at www.replacements.com, can help with pattern identification and help you learn whether you can acquire more pieces — because we collectors always want more.

With a little knowledge, you can shop like a pro. ¦

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