Unique Thrift Store find last night

[tamrock]

Yesterday after I dropped off my grandson I went to a Goodwill thrift store and came across this Cowrie cameo shell. Now I've seen countless souvenir cowrie shell cameos with scenes of tourist destinations carved in them and all are pretty cheap. This one however is really special with and carved with the Lords prayer in the King James version. Doing the research on it, I'm fairly sure this little item that was priced out at $1.29 and ended up being half off when I checked out, bringing it to a total of 71 cents is over 100 years old, from what's said of others examples I've reviewed online that are for sale or have been sold. One just like it is in a collection at Whaling museum in Martha's Vinyard. Also in my research I came across another fancy carved Cowrie shell cameo that commemorated a rather unique event in history, I've never heard before that took place in England on March 16, 1862 and an example of what's described as Victorian bullheadednes and a good little read for this Sunday morning. https://www.google.com/amp/s/museumcrush.org/relics-from-the-deepest-hand-dug-well-in-the-world/amp/

 

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[oldmxrat]

That's a very cool find, good eye!

 

[billb]

Congratulations on your great find

 

[jewelerguy]

cool. I've always thought the shells themselves were pretty neat but I've never seen one that's been carved. Interesting.

 

[ARC]

Arrrg... i always hate being "that guy"... but hey you know me... heh
Um... they make the exact shell and sell them here in the shops.... Identical.

I did do a quick search online and saw that there are some sites that claim "antique"... but... um... dont believe the hype.
There is NO WAY to definitively date these.... and there are thousands here for sale... and online.
Identical... same text etc..

Sorry Tam :/... not knocking it... still cool... but its gonna be hard to pin it down.

 

[tamrock]

Arrrg... i always hate being "that guy"... but hey you know me... heh
Um... they make the exact shell and sell them here in the shops.... Identical.

I did do a quick search online and saw that there are some sites that claim "antique"... but... um... dont believe the hype.
There is NO WAY to definitively date these.... and there are thousands here for sale... and online.
Identical... same text etc..

Sorry Tam :/... not knocking it... still cool... but its gonna be hard to pin it down.

Well I'm not seeing thousands with this level of detail for sale online, but I do agree there are many claims made of authenticity over things that are said to be old, but I do think this is something that is rather old and not the average souvenir that's produced today. Hopefully you or someone else can come up with more evidence to what your saying. Maybe I should've posted in the, What is it.

 

[Sandog]

Yesterday after I dropped off my grandson I went to a Goodwill thrift store and came across this Cowrie cameo shell. Now I've seen countless souvenir cowrie shell cameos with scenes of tourist destinations carved in them and all are pretty cheap. This one however is really special with and carved with the Lords prayer in the King James version. Doing the research on it, I'm fairly sure this little item that was priced out at $1.29 and ended up being half off when I checked out, bringing it to a total of 71 cents is over 100 years old, from what's said of others examples I've reviewed online that are for sale or have been sold. One just like it is in a collection at Whaling museum in Martha's Vinyard. Also in my research I came across another fancy carved Cowrie shell cameo that commemorated a rather unique event in history, I've never heard before that took place in England on March 16, 1862 and an example of what's described as Victorian bullheadednes and a good little read for this Sunday morning. https://www.google.com/amp/s/museumcrush.org/relics-from-the-deepest-hand-dug-well-in-the-world/amp/

ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS. No idea what the shell is worth though.

 

[E-Trac-Ohio]

Cool find !

 

[river roamer]

Very nice find

 

[Digger RJ]

Yesterday after I dropped off my grandson I went to a Goodwill thrift store and came across this Cowrie cameo shell. Now I've seen countless souvenir cowrie shell cameos with scenes of tourist destinations carved in them and all are pretty cheap. This one however is really special with and carved with the Lords prayer in the King James version. Doing the research on it, I'm fairly sure this little item that was priced out at $1.29 and ended up being half off when I checked out, bringing it to a total of 71 cents is over 100 years old, from what's said of others examples I've reviewed online that are for sale or have been sold. One just like it is in a collection at Whaling museum in Martha's Vinyard. Also in my research I came across another fancy carved Cowrie shell cameo that commemorated a rather unique event in history, I've never heard before that took place in England on March 16, 1862 and an example of what's described as Victorian bullheadednes and a good little read for this Sunday morning. https://www.google.com/amp/s/museumcrush.org/relics-from-the-deepest-hand-dug-well-in-the-world/amp/

Nice!!!! Congrats!!!!

 

[Tpmetal]

Hard to tell from the pics, but maybe a microscope or heavy magnifying glass could lend you some info on the possible tools used by the marks left behind? Looks super clean to have been done by hand, but blowing up the pics won't let me see much more detail. If done modern by machine or sand blasting(which is what I suspect was the tool utilized because it just looks like a stencil was used to me) It would be very different when magnified that what hand tools would leave behind.

 

[tamrock]

Hard to tell from the pics, but maybe a microscope or heavgnifying glass could lend you some info on the possible tools used by the marks left behind? Looks super clean to have been done by hand, but blowing up the pics won't let me see much more detail. If done modern by machine or sand blasting(which is what I suspect was the tool utilized because it just looks like a stencil was used to me) It would be very different when magnified that what hand tools would leave behind.

I did think that a sand blaster with a stencil of sorts might produce these results. Still every one that I see online that is similar, but not quite exactly identical in script are offered at online antique stores from here to the UK and lists these to be late 18th to early 20th century, but maybe they're wrong?. Out of 4 or 5 sites I just now looked at only one was still available to sell, the others were marked as sold.

 

[BennyV]

Nice piece. Can’t beat the price.

 

[ARC]

I just revisited this and did a quick search...
You can buy these wholesale for resale from most of the major wholesale shell companies that sell these.
The last site i saw was based in California and has them for $5 each wholesale.
And they have nightlights.

 

[boogeyman]

Well I'm not seeing thousands with this level of detail for sale online, but I do agree there are many claims made of authenticity over things that are said to be old, but I do think this is something that is rather old and not the average souvenir that's produced today. Hopefully you or someone else can come up with more evidence to what your saying. Maybe I should've posted in the, What is it.

Might not be what you'd accept as evidence. Don't know where you're located but the shell shop in Newport Beach CA has /had a whole counter display of them they might have a web site where you can compare. I know for fact they've been cranking these out by the thousands since at least the 70s most common / popular were the ones that had Hawaii on them.

Take a sniff, shells that were kept in a smoking household would pick up a brownish patina. Do a search for "carved cowry shell souvenirs' if yours is a common pattern probably worth $2.50.

 

[Emil W]

These come up at local auctions all the time and everyone always assumes they're antique, which is why you always see them for sale as antique--if the auction buyer thought it was old, they would sell it as old. But I agree, these are modern. The biggest giveaway that it's modern is the subject matter. The carving method is the other giveaway but that can't be easily determined from photos.

I've had and have sold genuine 18th and 19th century carved shells over the years--not many, but a few--and I can only say the differences are obvious if you've handled the real antiques, and they never have prayers.

If you want to get an idea of the subjects carved into the antiques, do an online search of the larger international auction houses, such as Christie's and Sotheby's. If you search smaller auctions they'll likely have them misidentified as antique so don't count on them proving anything.

 

[JohnnyMac]

Yesterday after I dropped off my grandson I went to a Goodwill thrift store and came across this Cowrie cameo shell. Now I've seen countless souvenir cowrie shell cameos with scenes of tourist destinations carved in them and all are pretty cheap. This one however is really special with and carved with the Lords prayer in the King James version. Doing the research on it, I'm fairly sure this little item that was priced out at $1.29 and ended up being half off when I checked out, bringing it to a total of 71 cents is over 100 years old, from what's said of others examples I've reviewed online that are for sale or have been sold. One just like it is in a collection at Whaling museum in Martha's Vinyard. Also in my research I came across another fancy carved Cowrie shell cameo that commemorated a rather unique event in history, I've never heard before that took place in England on March 16, 1862 and an example of what's described as Victorian bullheadednes and a good little read for this Sunday morning. https://www.google.com/amp/s/museumcrush.org/relics-from-the-deepest-hand-dug-well-in-the-world/amp/

Very cool