Old silver item

[Duke]

What is this it says from top to bottom LETTER POST 4 OZ..1D
Each add
2 oz 1/2 d
PARCEL POST 1 “backwards j” B 3D
2,, 4D
Each add
1D up
11 something
Book post
Oz or part 1/2D
foreign post
1/2oz 2 1/2D
Books
2oz 1/2 D

 

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[Duke]

Most of what I found near averaged age 1880’s draped bust cent - memorial but mostly Indians

 

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[Duke]

Someone would have had to toss something that was worth more than and dollar amount listed on it in silver

 

[Iron Buzz]

Might have been mounted on an old postal scale... and when rates no longer applied it was removed and tossed.

But, silver? Must have been a very high-end postal scale!

 

[Red-Coat]

Of course they are hallmarks.

Its silver.

This is the best I can do with the OP's original pic (the later pics weren't of any help).


What I see is a maker's mark (B&C), a fineness mark (lion passant guardant), and what may be a date letter (t). If it's truly a hallmark then where's the city assay mark



I think you will find that this is a pseudo-hallmark of the kind that began to be outlawed from 1896, starting with the prohibition of crown symbols on silverplate. The maker is Brookes & Crookes (John Brookes & Thomas Crookes) of the Atlantic Works in St Philip's Road, Sheffield. Their speciality was Sheffield Steel razors, sports knives, pocket knives and then, later, plated flatware. They do seem to have made occasional silver items with a full hallmark) but I think this is quality Sheffield plate masquerading as silver. If the date letter is 't' and they were following hallmark conventions then it's 1914.

 

[Red-Coat]

Might have been mounted on an old postal scale... and when rates no longer applied it was removed and tossed.

That's a good suggestion and would explain why it's all beat up like that. Here's a pic of some antique postal scales and note there's a plate nailed on the plinth. Can't read it all but it says "Inland Letter Rates" at the top and doubtless below that the rates are all priced up according to weight. Also if the OP's plate was made in 1914 then the British postal rates were revised the following year, making the pricing obsolete.



One other interesting thing. In 1902, Ernest Wright & Son rented an eight-foot-square (!) room in Brookes & Crookes' premises assembling scissors under the 'Kutrite' brand. These were speciality products for tailors, upholsterers, carpet-fitters, hairdressers and a myriad of other uses including "scissors for postal services". Special scissors for that? Who knew?

 

[ARC]

They had something for everything it seems... It amazes me at times how innovative and industrious our ancestors were.

Speaking of scissors... even special scissors for wicks.

 

[Duke]

If it helps anyone I just dug this out of the ground and have been doing this for 30 years or so and it’s definitely at minimum coin silver but looks sterling to me

 

[Duke]

Oh the reason that it’s beat up is that it was found in a corn field and most certainly hit by a plow many times. It was completely folded up when I dug it

 

[Duke]

On thing abnormal I noticed was that the two holes on the ends had an impression where either washers or some sort of mount was but the third center hole did not have that and was unsymmetrical and more importantly holes through some of the lettering. So this is and alteration from its original state

 

[curiouscat]

i think it is a rate plate off of an old postage scale see examples

What is this it says from top to bottom LETTER POST 4 OZ..1D
Each add
2 oz 1/2 d
PARCEL POST 1 “backwards j” B 3D
2,, 4D
Each add
1D up
11 something
Book post
Oz or part 1/2D
foreign post
1/2oz 2 1/2D
Books
2oz 1/2 DView attachment 1799728View attachment 1799729View attachment 1799730View attachment 1799731View attachment 1799732

i think it is a rate plate off of an old postage scale see examples

 

[DigDug216]

Silver matey!

 

[Red-Coat]

Silver matey!

I disagree. The anatomy of an English Hallmark is that, alongside the maker’s mark, there is a purity symbol, a town/city symbol indicating where the piece was assayed, and a date letter. Additionally (and in certain time periods) there may be other symbols such as a duty mark.

What we have here is a maker's mark, a purity symbol and a date letter but no town/city mark for assay.



After Sheffield plate and then electroplating became a common industry practice to produce items less expensively, there was ‘mission creep’ by manufacturers to apply what are known as ‘pseudo hallmarks’ to silver plate with the deliberate intention that, for an uninformed purchaser, they would resemble the marks applied to full silver. On a technicality, this was not illegal, as long as the marks did not exactly replicate an official hallmark and the item was not otherwise advertised as silver. This practice reached epidemic proportions by the late 1800s, manufacturers of full silver complained bitterly to the government that it was an unfair practice, jewellery associations described it as a scandal, and there were then changes in legislation from 1896 onwards to nip it in the bud.

The first step of those changes was to prohibit the use of a crown mark on anything that was not full silver. The crown mark was specifically targeted in those initial changes to the law since Sheffield was by far the largest centre for the plating industry, was a hotbed of manufacturers using this loophole, and the crown mark was the assay mark for the city. For this piece, the maker was not renowned for solid silver and he was in Sheffield. Logically, he would have had it hallmarked there if it had actually been silver. Even if assayed somewhere else it should still have a town/city mark.

It’s a pseudo hallmark for silver plate and the Sheffield crown is not present because it would have been illegal to use it from 1896 onwards on anything apart from full silver. Also, by this time, white metal alloys had largely replaced copper as the base material for plating and you can’t rely on a colour difference in the interior to check whether an item is plated.

 

[EQ8]

Absolutely not. Our move to metric SI units was triggered by joining the EEC in 1973.

Learn something new every day.
Try www.925-1000.com to find your hallmarks.

 

[Duke]

It’s Been in the ground 125 years I assure it’s not silver plate

 

[Red-Coat]

It’s Been in the ground 125 years I assure it’s not silver plate

OK. Then it's a rare piece from a maker not exactly renowned for silver, made even rarer by the fact that the (habitually diligent and professional) hallmarking authorities in Britain completely forgot on this occasion to apply a city assay office mark.

I might point out that you don't know that it has been in the ground for 125 years; only when it was made, and even that is not completely certain.

Anyone attempting to read our hallmarks needs to have a proper understanding that, here’, ‘hallmark’, is a very precise term for which the marks are regulated with respect to format and the exact design/style of the letters and symbols used. In America, the term is more loosely applied to marks in general which aren’t regulated with the same degree of precision. In Britain, a true hallmark (at least in the time period we are talking here) must consist of a purity mark, a city/town assay mark and a date letter, but not necessarily in that order. For Sheffield, the city mark is a crown, and for London it’s a leopard’s head, facing (other towns/cities have their own official marks) as per the two examples below:



For this piece, as well as the city mark being missing, the date letter format also appears be wrong. The ‘Times Roman’ lower case ‘t’ would be 1914 if it were London assayed. The letter style itself is correct for that, but the shield shape is wrong. If it had been Sheffield assayed then it would be 1911 and, although the shield shape is then correct, the style for the letter itself is wrong. The official mark would be a gothic ‘t’. See the above examples.

This just reinforces the fact that this is not a silver hallmarked piece. It’s a pseudo-hallmark for silver plate. Manufacturers applied these marks themselves for reasons already explained. Some manufacturers of silver plate used the same date letter sequences as those use by Assay Offices and some did not. On balance, the date is probably more likely to be 1914 or 1911 than anything else.

By this time, silver plate was being produced using quality white metal bases that were at least as resistant to corrosion as silver itself.

It is at least theoretically possible that a manufacturer could produce items in silver and apply pseudo-hallmarks himself. However, since the whole purpose of pseudo-marks was to create the impression that a piece was silver when it actually wasn’t, that’s really, really unlikely because such pieces could never be advertised or sold as silver.

 

[ARC]

Red coat... Are you not familiar with the lion mark being the English standard mark for silver ? ? ?

 

[ARC]

Its called "Lion Passant".

 

[ARC]

 

[Bramblefind]

Here's a pocket knife from the same era, different maker & with US postal rates.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-vtg-ca-1900-uspo-postal-rates-1450430939

** VERY SCARCE** OLD ANTIQUE VTG Ca 1900 USPO POSTAL RATES POCKET KNIFE SILVER HANDLES This offering is for an antique circa 1900 pocket knife having the US Post Office Rates for Postage etc. listed on the handles. The handles are non metallic so I assume that with the maker being Wallace Bros., a silver company, that they are indeed silver and likely sterling. To be on the safe side assume they are nickel silver and you will not be disappointed. I'm not exactly sure when the knife was made by judging by the prices listed it likely dates to about 1900 or earlier. 1St Class Mail weighing 1 oz is listed at 2 cents, while newspapers per 4 oz, books per 2 oz and merchandise per 1 oz were all 1 cent.

 

[Red-Coat]

Red coat... Are you not familiar with the lion mark being the English standard mark for silver ? ? ?

View attachment 1803648

Of course I am but you're missing the point. If you read my previous posts or any authoritative source on hall marking in Britain you will see that a hall mark (for this period) has FOUR elements, as in the example you are showing (the examples I showed depicted three of those elements, since I omitted the maker mark in the interests of clarity).

From your example, the third icon is indeed the standard silver mark as the lion passant. However, that in itself does not guarantee that you have a piece of solid silver and it was not illegal to use this mark on silver plate. Many manufacturers of silver plate in this period used the lion passant 'dishonestly' (although not illegally) as a way of improving the credentials of what they sold. Never overtly in the sense of it being fraudulent, but as a subtle subliminal suggestion to the purchaser.

If you look at your own example you will see, as I have repeatedly said, that it's accompanied by an assay mark for the town or city authority that has tested and certified the piece as silver. In your own example it's the second icon, as a leopard's head facing and that's the city mark for the London hallmarking authority. That mark (or any other town mark) is missing from the piece in question. That means there is no indication that it has been certified as silver since it's not an official hallmark unless the town assay mark accompanies the silver mark. It would have been illegal for anyone to apply those two marks in combination on silver plate and that is why the town mark has been omitted. Cynical, but not illegal.

Please read what I said again about pseudo-hallmarks on silver plate, why they were used, and how to distinguish them from actual hallmarks on solid silver.

Note also that the final icon in your example is the date letter as an 'S' within a shield. Date letters are individual to the city that certifies the silver and for London had a 20 year repetitive cycle. That is, 'S' was used again and again every 20 years and so could represent multiple possible dates. For that reason, both the style of the font used and the shield shape surrounding it were changed on a 20 year cycle. Note that the shield in your example has two indents at the bottom and a flat top with chamfered corners. The 'S' is also serifed 'Times Roman'. That specific combination tells us its a lower case 's' and gives us the date 1913 (as opposed to 20 years later as 1933 or 20 years earlier as 1893 for example). Any deviation from these characteristics that are not an exact match for the expected combination of shield and letter will tell you that you don't have a genuine silver hallmark.

As I pointed out, the piece in question does have deviations that confirm it has not been officially hallmarked as silver. The font style for the letter 't' does not match up with the officially-designated shield shape for either Sheffield (where the maker was based) or for London (which some manufacturers used as an alternative assay office to their home city).