Hidden gems in your antique silver collection
Jamie Woo

Defined Tag: Antique Silver.

My family has this tradition of keeping antique silver, and they've been doing this for generations. It does not all come from one source. Some families seem to inherit all their jewelry from some ancient ancestor who was extremely successful, lucky, or crooked. But in my family, the members add to the silver vault gradually, and individually. Something like a family heirloom thing, except everyone "contributes."

There is antique silver from my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and other distant relatives, of which some wind up in the "forgotten by time" category. Some of them are gorgeous antique sterling silver jewelry, while others are degraded or damaged through the actions of time. Do we take care of our antiques? Of course we do! It's just that no one really goes around polishing them every week. Some of the oldest antique jewelry, are in fact, so tarnished that they are barely recognizable. I was the one who decided something needed to be done. One day, I went around digging them up and examining them.

I am sure some of our antique silver jewelry are in the top class range. No one in my family had ever sold off any of the silver jewelry antiques, and I assumed that no one ever would. Value didn't matter because we regarded almost all of them as priceless. Nonetheless, I did get some of them appraised for a value, later on. After all, I had always been a little bit curious about our silver collection, and I figured there was no harm in finding out.

What I found out shocked me at that time. Many of the antique silverware were worth a small fortune, and it was hard not to get tempted selling them away for fast cash. Thank God that never happened.

I stuck with prudence, even though all the while, the international antique silver market was booming, and it was so easy to forget that those antique silver items were REAL family antiques worth some good coin. Selling family history didn't seem too right. In the end, we kept most of them as family heirlooms and sold (a few). I guess it's good to know we have something to fall back on in times of "drought," or emergencies while at the same time, we keep them closeted to increase their value, and only consider the "unthinkable," when there are no other options.

Has it worked out well? You bet. As time progresses, I am confident they will only increase in value manifold. That will be the day our family heirlooms pay us back - many times in full!

Jamie Woo is a freelance writer who regularly writes about one of his favorite subjects - antiques. He is a frequent contributor at many article directories, and is a hobby antique collector in his spare time.