Antique Silver Salver featured item of the week

Featured item this week is a delightful Victorian Silver Salver which carries hallmarks for London 1865 and makers marks of HW. It has a pretty engraved pattern and well worth viewing.

The development of this website has not progressed as quickly as I would like as I have had three days out of the office this week. One day was to visit my brother to do some technical work on a joint website, the second was for a fishing trip on our shared boat with my son whilst the third was work proper when I visited the Quarterly Fine Sale at Hampton and Littlewood auctioneersat Exeter.

Now because I took the day off to go fishing I did not get to preview the sale prior to the day of the auction. I believe it is essential to preview any auction without any time constraints so that you can view the lots in detail. If you do not then you will not spot any damage and flaws and could end up buying something for too much money and not in the condition you would wish.

This auction was a quarterly sale. The auction room now has a large plasma screen set up in front of the auctioneer and a computer operator for online bidding and a number of telephones manned by staff handling telephone bidding. Once the auction started the process of traditional bidding becomes complicated as the auctioneer has to takes bids in the room,then the computer and then the telephone before the hammer comes down to end the sale. Now why am I mentioning all of this,well it now causes an enormous delay and frustration to those attending and bidding in person.

An extreme example of one such item is this Chinese vase. Now I know nothing on this subject. The catalogue read "A CHINESE OVOID VASE AND COVER painted with scrolling lotus on a yellow ground, Daoguang seal mark in red to the base, 26cm high, with a wooden stand (3). £50-100".

Bidding started in the room at £300 and quickly moved higher to over £1000 before those in the sale room gave up and the internet bidders came in. The price quickly rose past the £5000 mark and then the telephone bidders took over. Two telephone bidders clearly knew its worth and were desperate to buy. The vase eventually sold for in excess of £19000.00!!

Whilst this is very good for the seller and the auction house the actual sale seemed to take forever. Ths became a constant theme throughout the day with the internet taking over at some point and those in the auction room left to amuse themselves.

I do think there is a real danger with internet bidding. On some of the silver items I inspected there were notable flaws and damage not mentioned in the catalogue. For example a nice set of boxed knives and forks looked lovely in the picture yet close examination revealed solder on the ends on one of the knives. I would not buy this to retail yet someone paid a high price for them. I hope they inspected them first and are not going to be surprised when they collect them. If you get locked into a bidding frenzy on the internet without inspecting the items first then you have only yourself to blame.

Well my frustration got the better of me and after buying just 6 items I decided to call it a day and leave. Amongst these were a gorgeous Kasmiri breakfast set and a good pair of George II style candlesticks by William Hutton hallmarked 1900 which will appear in our ebay auctions before it finds its way onto our new website.

Next week looks just as busy with another preview and auction day to replace the stock sold this month. Despite the credit crunch we have just had the best month ever which proves investors are realising the benifits of Antique Silver.