Antique souvenir spoons. And what about this coin?

[Tallone]

I didn’t purchase these antique souvenir spoons. They came to me from my mother. I believe they belonged to her grandmother. They appear to date from the late 1800s to early 1900s. I count 76 spoons. Most are sterling silver. Most of them are from locations in the U.S. but there are several from the Caribbean, Canada, and a few other places outside the U.S.



I know people collect these and, from my eBay research, prices seem to typically run $10 to $20. However, as is often the case with collectibles, there are a select few that can bring much more than that, sometimes in the hundreds of dollars. Enameled spoons seem to fetch the highest prices but most of the really high priced ones have enameling in the bowl. I have a six enameled spoons (top right corner of the photo) but the enameling is limited to a small section at the head of the handle. All of these spoons are from Canada.

I also noticed that some of the spoons on eBay appear to have been polished while others are not. I am inclined to leave them as they are unless someone can make a compelling case to polish them before sale.
I am particularly intrigued by the group of four spoons at the bottom of the picture. Here is a close up of them:



From left to right these spoons are from: The Chicago World’s Fair (1892), the Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York (1901), Hawaiian coin, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (1904). Spoons from old world fairs seem to do well.

The Hawaii spoon is interesting. It is obviously made from a coin dated 1883. I had no idea Hawaii minted their own coinage. I found a few Hawaiian coins from 1883 on eBay and they seem to sell for hundreds of dollars. Of course, the highest value ones are graded collector coins. My coin/spoon is in very good condition in that the writing and graphics are very clear but I’m sure the fact the coin was cupped to make a spoon will hurt the value significantly. I’m sure there are coin collectors here on TNet. I’m curious if this coin would still be of interest to coin collectors or if it would have more value to spoon collectors.

 

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[Lost&Found]

Nice Hawaiian quarter dollar.

 

[Punatic]

Very cool! I don't know much about the spoons but I do collect hawaiiana (stuff from Hawaii). If you are interested in selling or a trade for he Hawaii one send me a PM.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[kingskid1611]

That is one nice collection. Thanks for sharing, Good luck on your quest for information.

 

[Tallone]

I wanted to get more of the back story on these spoons so I had a conversation with my mother yesterday. She is 98 years old (born in 1917) and still quite sharp mentally. She has a degree in history, has traced family geneaology back into the 1500s, and has published an article about her family in a professional journal. In other words, she has unearthed most of the family skeletons! Turns out there is quite a story behind these spoons. The spoon collection was compiled by my mother's father's sister so these spoons came from my mother's aunt, not her grandmother as I had thought. Her name was Louise. Here is a family portrait taken in 1900:



My grandfather is the one standing. Louise, obviously, is on the right. She would have been 12 years old in this photo. She lived into her 90s in the same house in upstate New York her entire life. She started the collection as a child. The family was fairly well off financially and traveled a good bit. There are a fairly large number of spoons from in and around New England so those probably were spoons Louise acquired on her own. Tragically, Louise contracted an illness a few years after this photo was taken which left her totally blind. However, she still enjoyed her spoon collection and her brothers would pick up spoons for her from the places they lived and visited.

There are about a dozen spoons from the Caribbean and Hawaii. These were acquired by Louise's brother Henry (he is on the far left in the photo). Turns out this trip to tropical locales wasn't exactly Henry's idea. Family lore has it that Henry was quite the ladies man and, while attending Rutgers University, got to fooling around with a professor's wife! As a result he was, shall we say, "encouraged" to get out of town for awhile. Who said people in the Victorian era never had any fun! Anyway, Henry had a friend from a wealthy family that was about to embark on a tour of the Caribbean and Hawaii so Henry was able to accompany him on that trip and avoid the wrath of his lover's husband.

Given this interesting history, I'm more inclined to hold on to the collection but I'm still going to think about selling.

I have one other spoon from Hawaii. Here it is:



Punatic, if I decide to sell the Hawaii spoons, I will be sure to let you know.

 

[Punatic]

Coconut island! I grew up in Hilo! My screen name is a play on the area next to Hilo, called Puna where I was raised.

I jumped off an old stone lifeguard tower into the bay on coconut island hundreds of times and attended many party's there since its a popular gathering place.

Crazy cool man, I've never seen one so if you if you decide not to sell, just sharing pics is very cool in my book, thank you!

 

[Tallone]

One of these Cocoanut Island spoons sold on eBay about a week ago for $39.