new poster to this section...

[chukers]

Well I guess I really didn't know there was a section for this kind of treasure hunting... I have always considered it treasure hunting to me... now I see there are more of you.... well her is my story... ( I already posted it in Today's finds but I'll post it here in case some of you missed it there...

Well ok... here is the deal... it's not that exciting nor is it really that great of a story... but I am going to tell it as it happened...

Every weekend (just as you guys do) I go out Friday and Saturday mornings mostly Saturday... and I should get out earlier because when you find the better deals... I am always on the lookout for silver and gold but rarely find any. In the 20 or so years of looking at yard/garage/carport sales I really haven't found much of any value...
Well like any other weekend I didn't find much I look for the usual scrap brass copper iron and such. Apparently I missed one sale outside of town... it has been there all weekend Friday Saturday and Sunday till about 1pm ... that when I found it... So I stop.. its on a main roadway so I didn't expect to find anything at all... as I suspected pretty much all of it was junk... as they yelled across the yard that everything on that table is half price... well I see this buckle... and I recognize it as a rodeo cowboy buckle well in this case cowgirl... its pretty tarnished and faded and the back is well worn so I didn't think much of it... but it had some weight to it... so I picked it up and looked at the back... and I read comstock silver silversmith and said to myself well what is that? Well I knew it wasn't plated or it would say plate and I knew it wasn't German silver because it would of said that too... I also knew of the comstock silver mine... and it did not have a price on it... so I gathered a few other things along with the buckle and took them to the lady and I said there is no price on the buckle and I asked how much... I figured it would be a $5 or $10 dollar price tag and if it was I was going to say no thanks.... and then she said .25 cents!!!! I said ok and she totaled up the rest and it came to $2.00 and she said half of that is $1!!! so I paid the lady... now at this time I really didn't think much of it because I haven't yet figured out what I had, not until someone here enlightened me!

now I have a dilemma... should I or should I not return the buckle to the owner and explain what I have learned... what just baffles me to death is that is sat there on the table for 3 days and handled by countless people before I came along and picked it up and was curious about it.

Chukers

Front

Back

Cleaned

[creeper71]

i can never understand why people want to go back to a place to tell a person who had the yardsale that they uncharged... It was worth a dollar to the lady an that is all it was worth to her... Don't go back an tell her cause 9 out 10 chance she will want the item back..then youR SOL ...

[magjm]

Say you found something at a yard sale you thought was worth more than it was priced. You get home and find out the item is plated, not solid, or a good fake, or maybe broken. You took a chance on it and lost. Would you then take it back to the yard sale and expect to get a refund? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

[jerseyben]

Say you found something at a yard sale you thought was worth more than it was priced. You get home and find out the item is plated, not solid, or a good fake, or maybe broken. You took a chance on it and lost. Would you then take it back to the yard sale and expect to get a refund? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Ditto.

Returning a found class ring is one thing but a yard sale is a yard sale. People are selling stuff because they are ready to part with it and forget about it. I am sure they are happy with the money they got for it and the extra space it freed up in their house.

[curbdiggercarl57]

Or, just mail to me.
I'll just add it to my already guilt-ridden conscious, going back decades.
You got a great deal, that's the whole purpose of going to those sales in the first place.
Carl

[SCdigger]

Go back? Then why yard sale?...this is a treasure hunt...you found treasure...get a good weight on it, do a little research and flip it...turn your $.25 into more treasure...then you've got more funds to hit next weekend's sales and so on and so on...

GT

[chukers]

Go back? Then why yard sale?...this is a treasure hunt...you found treasure...get a good weight on it, do a little research and flip it...turn your $.25 into more treasure...then you've got more funds to hit next weekend's sales and so on and so on...

GT

you are correct... just like all the others are saying... that is why we yard sale... I guess though I have been doing it for 20+ years I never really found anything valuable till now... now I need to find out if its worth more as a collectors piece or as scrap metal... I guess in the end that is really what my motives are... and you guys have the experience that why I posted it here too.


it weight just over 75 grams but I don't know if its 100% silver or is that gold on top... or brass...

Chukers

[creeper71]

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it weight just over 75 grams but I don't know if its 100% silver or is that gold on top... or brass...

Chukers

to me it looks to be silver an bronze.....

[chukers]

it weight just over 75 grams but I don't know if its 100% silver or is that gold on top... or brass...

Chukers

to me it looks to be silver an bronze.....

Would gold tarnish like it looks in the first picture?

[brendan1414]

Gold doesn't tarnish, i would also agree that it looks like silver and brass. nice find, but it most likely IS german silver. check out this very similiar piece on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-COMSTOCK...item564488d4e3

Still a $60 item for $1, so great job.. keep looking, i hit $60 profit every day i go garage sailing.

[chukers]

Gold doesn't tarnish, i would also agree that it looks like silver and brass. nice find, but it most likely IS german silver. check out this very similiar piece on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-COMSTOCK...item564488d4e3

Still a $60 item for $1, so great job.. keep looking, i hit $60 profit every day i go garage sailing.

Yeah they make a lot of German silver buckles and they are clearly marked German silver... even thought that one in the link you posted don't say german silver on the back... they may have it listed incorrectly... that might be a good buy at $60, but they also make sterling silver buckles... this does not say German nor does it say sterling... it does say Comstock Silver and from what I learned comstock is a silver mine in Nevada... so I'm pretty sure its the real thing... I need to contact the makers and find out if they used brass with their silver buckles... because I do know they do have silver and gold buckles which they sell for several thousands of dollars... I just don't know if this is one of them. Wouldn't that be interesting if it was!

Chukers

[gord]

One retail site (Western Mall) describes "Comstock Silver" as "Bimet or Sterling overlay. A sheet of sterling silver bonded to a sheet of 18% nickel silver. Not an electroplate."

[chukers]

One retail site (Western Mall) describes "Comstock Silver" as "Bimet or Sterling overlay. A sheet of sterling silver bonded to a sheet of 18% nickel silver. Not an electroplate."

I have seen site list German separate and then sterling and comstock silver together... so who knows... I am waiting on a response from the makers.

Chukers

[hombre_de_plata_flaco]

I've never felt guilty about getting a good deal on something.

[chukers]

some of you have raised some good questions so... I went digging and have found some more information...

Comstock Silver - The manufacturer's name for Bimet or Sterling overlay. A sheet of sterling silver bonded to a sheet of 18% nickel silver. Not an electroplate.

so its mostly silver but not 100% but hey for a quarter I'm not complaining!

Chukers

[diggummup]

Just as it's up to the buyer to know what a good price for something is, the same applies to a seller when it comes to pricing and selling an item. Unless I unknowingly find a 5-7 figure item for less than $100, then I wouldn't ever think about returning an item or notifying the seller that such and such item is worth X amount of dollars. We do this (at least I do) so that we can find hidden "treasures" for as little monies as possible. Every week I find several items that I can turn around and make 10 times what I paid for them. Granted most of them are in the $20-50 dollar range that I paid between $1-5 dollars for but hey, it's a helluva profit margin, and lately it's been helping a little with the extra spending money too, with the small amount of work i've been getting recently 2-3 days a week. All in all, don't feel guilty about finding a good deal. It's what your supposed to be doing when your out garage saleing. I don't spend countless hours every week researching antiques and collectibles for my health, it's to keep me informed as to what I should be looking for, in order to turn a profit. There's nothing immoral about it, in a few years I plan on doing it full time, in some fashion or another.

PS- I was wondering about the composition of that buckle myself. I'm sure the trim is brass, but i'm not sure about the silver. Let us know what you find out, if anything. Good find regardless.

Thanks for the added info., still a nice collectible buckle.

[chukers]

Just as it's up to the buyer to know what a good price for something is, the same applies to a seller when it comes to pricing and selling an item. Unless I unknowingly find a 5-7 figure item for less than $100, then I wouldn't ever think about returning an item or notifying the seller that such and such item is worth X amount of dollars. We do this (at least I do) so that we can find hidden "treasures" for as little monies as possible. Every week I find several items that I can turn around and make 10 times what I paid for them. Granted most of them are in the $20-50 dollar range that I paid between $1-5 dollars for but hey, it's a helluva profit margin, and lately it's been helping a little with the extra spending money too, with the small amount of work i've been getting recently 2-3 days a week. All in all, don't feel guilty about finding a good deal. It's what your supposed to be doing when your out garage saleing. I don't spend countless hours every week researching antiques and collectibles for my health, it's to keep me informed as to what I should be looking for, in order to turn a profit. There's nothing immoral about it, in a few years I plan on doing it full time, in some fashion or another.

PS- I was wondering about the composition of that buckle myself. I'm sure the trim is brass, but i'm not sure about the silver. Let us know what you find out, if anything. Good find regardless.

Thanks for the added info., still a nice collectible buckle.

Thank you for your comments... just reminds me why I do it... check out this page its a vary useful page... its where I identified what "comstock silver" is... http://www.bealscowboybuckles.com/terminology.html


chukers