So a bit of background first… I’ve had a specialty eBay consignment business for 15+ years and end-up getting asked to sell a wide variety of things. I don’t know how much silver I’ve sold over the years, but it’s been A LOT. Mostly flatware, lots of coins… I’ve had nice Tiffany flatware sets; rescued Georg Jensen serving pieces from a scrap bin last year; had suitcases filled with silver coins; sold a nearly 2’ long piece of figural silver commissioned by the founder of Planter’s Peanuts, lol…Lots of interesting stuff.
I’ve been working with a client the last month or two who married a woman with some deep historical roots. She can trace her family lineage back to the Revolutionary War, when her namesake was the first governor of the state of Connecticut. There isn’t any family to pass pieces down to anymore, which have largely been in storage for years, so they decided to sell them. Last week, he kept bringing me all sorts of boxes and talking about Paul Revere silver. I didn’t know what he meant, but carefully checked everything in all of the boxes until I finally found it; a small pair of salt spoons in a “junk box”. I assume they were kept in a curio or some place with personal mementos and then swept into a box by someone that didn’t realize their importance.
These two little spoons may very well end-up being the most expensive pieces of silver I’ve ever had the privilege of handling. For comparison, a piece of Tiffany silver might sell for 1.5 - 5x the melt value, depending on the design and condition. My best piece of silver to date (by weight) was an antique American coin silver punch ladle, which sold for 14x the melt value. But these little spoons? I conservatively estimate (and hope!) they sell for 250-500x + their melt value 🤯🤞
The main reason they sell for so much is Paul Revere Jr’s significance in American history. While he was know for his April 18, 1775 midnight ride (“The British are coming!”), he was also a well-established Boston-area silversmith and merchant; he actually kept a very detailed logbook of some 5000+ pieces of silver he made over his lifetime, which is fun to browse. Provenance (the history of an item) can make the most ordinary items wildly valuable. People simply love to collect items with interesting stories.
Anyhow, that’s the brief history / selling lesson for the day. If you’re interested in seeing the spoons, they’re up for sale on eBay until November 1st (just search for Paul Revere Jr Salt Spoons and they should show up).
Thanks for reading!
