How to sell the family silver
PUBLIC anger about everything from railways to utilities is nothing new. In the 1980s, Harold Macmillan coined a famous phrase when he compared the policy of privatisation to “selling the family silver”.
It was a clever idiom that even then sounded, and was, elitist. But that didn’t make it any the less memorable.
When they inherit things including “the family silver” people today are, it seems to me, no less caring than former generations may have been, but if not immune are far less susceptible to that serious affliction – sentimentality.
They also have no sense of guilt about parting with many of the objects they’ve inherited. In liberating themselves from these unwelcome, newly arrived house guests and the cost of insurance they don’t need things as emotional “props” by which to remember a loved one.
Why would you, for example, wish to keep a poorly-made, massproduced silver teapot from the 1930s that might have been a wedding present or gift on retirement, or a badly-designed and lopsided Victorian gold brooch?
Driven by an irresistible urge to rid themselves of such items, they should beware of selling too cheaply. Time and again otherwise sensible people have been tricked into parting with gold, silver, art and antiques for much less than the value, often on the pretext of the “scrap price”.
This and other deceitful practices are endemic in the High Street jewellers and Nottingham is no exception.
Change your mind after you’ve parted with it and you will find that the shop “unfortunately sold it the next minute”. It is as if their mission statement was “there is one born every minute”.
Selling by auction, whether doing it yourself online or through a specialist professional auctioneer, of which Mellors & Kirk is one, should ensure your interests are protected.
Theft of a more traditional type is the other main reason for selling. Crime statistics, whether true or false, suggest a worrying trend with more daring and vicious robberies, such as the present spate of those by moped gangs.
Two weeks ago in Sweden, several of the crown jewels were stolen in a smash and grab raid, the robbers escaping on two wheels then taking to a speedboat.
At the Auction House it is a real privilege to be in a position to tell someone that an old wristwatch is rare and valuable or an unconsidered piece of jewellery is worth vastly more than they thought.
At a recent valuation day a visitor brought in a larger-than-normal 1930s pilot’s watch. Made by Longines to the design of PB H Weems of the US Navy, it has an adjustable seconds hand that could be set to the newly invented radio time signals, making for much greater navigational accuracy. This example dates from 1936 and was made for Wittnauer of New York.
Captain Weems trained aviator Charles Lindbergh and this watch is of the type that he would have owned. Rare and highly desirable, especially in original unrestored condition, it should have no difficulty exceeding the £3,000£5,000 estimate when it goes under the hammer at Mellors & Kirk on September 19.
A stunning but impractical 1970s gold bracelet set with diamonds, the shape of which reminds me of an oscilloscope signal, is the perfect example of an item the potential of which could pass unnoticed.
I can hear the tempting “weigh-in” offer of about £1,200 but would the shop’s buyer point out the maker’s signature of George Weil? It is worth much more because it is so redolent of the era and the work of a contemporary of Andrew Grima (1921-2007), the important Anglo-italian London based jeweller.
Brooches are almost uniquely out of fashion as a type of jewellery, but this mid-20th-century diamond brooch is signed by Cartier. In the same sale it is estimated at £5,000£7,000. A seller would be highly unlikely to receive a good price from a jeweller.
Valuable jewellery can broadly be divided into the collectable or the wearable.
It is those items that fall outside these categories, the bulk of hugely overpriced new rings, bracelets and watches that soon become old fashioned, that are instantly worth vastly less than they cost.
I think Supermac (Harold’s nickname from a caricature) deliberately chose “silver” as a metaphor because “jewels” would have sounded too posh for so blueblooded a Tory ex-prime Minster to use.
Either that, or he knew more than I thought!
■■ Mellors & Kirk will be holding the first of its dedicated free specialist jewellery valuation days at The Auction House on Wednesday from 9am until noon.