GUEST: I brought in a Van Cleef and Arpels butterfly brooch. My parents had gone on vacation to Paris, I believe in the late '60s, and my father bought this for my mother in an antique store in Paris.
APPRAISER: You're right about the brooch being Van Cleef and Arpels. They started in Paris in 1906. They didn't get to New York until 1939. The company Van Cleef and Arpels is kind of born out of a marriage. You, you have Alfred Van Cleef, and he marries Estelle Arpels. Estelle has two brothers who are also involved with the business, some of them coming from the gem trade, some of them coming from the lapidary trade. A lapidary is a woman or a man who cuts gemstones. Quick, meteoric rise to fame because they had fabulous style and designs. In this case, where you see a butterfly. They did a lot of animals. They did a lot of insects and bugs. Very whimsical and playful. People just really took to it-- a lot of people like, uh, Barbara Hutton, Elizabeth Taylor. They made stuff for queens and kings, for royalty. It's tiger eye. When you look at the stone, and you see the banding and what they call the chatoyancy-- as the light hits it, it kind of reflects-- it reminds you of a tiger, and a tiger's eye, the skin, the color.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And that's where it gets its name from. And if you see here, you got all this movement. I mean, it looks like a real butterfly.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: It's fabulous. Incorporated into the 18-karat yellow gold, there's 12 round brilliant-cut diamonds. They weigh 0.25, which is one-quarter of a carat total weight. Now, I'm going to take it off. You see how the, the stone is curved. So then they in turn, they curved the hardware in the back, the gold, and again, the, the antenna, curve to follow the frame of the butterfly wings.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: We have here a sign of a quality piece. Instead of being a standard kind of catch, it's what we call a trombone class. This slide moves in and out. It's all handmade. You say they got it in the late '60s.
GUEST: I'm thinking.
APPRAISER: I'm thinking you're off a few years.
GUEST: Okay, that's-- yeah, I'm sure I am.
APPRAISER: (chuckles) If you look over here, it says "VCA."
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: So that's Van Cleef and Arpels.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Now, one of the reasons I know it's a little later, in the middle, there's a little "c," copyright. Some of the very early pieces, you don't see that.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Right after it, there's two numbers, "71." That's the year it was made. Now, you told me a story.
GUEST: (chuckles) My husband took this pin to our local Van Cleef and Arpels. The person there at Van Cleef and Arpels said that they could do, uh, an appraisal of the piece, but it, there would be a $1,500 fee for them to do so, and not knowing the value of the piece, we opted not to do that.
APPRAISER: What they really do is authenticate it.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And then they could see when the pin was purchased, and for how much. And it's not $1,500 anymore.
GUEST: Oh, no? Okay.
APPRAISER: Now it's two grand.
GUEST: Okay. (chuckling)
APPRAISER: If this had been just a very nice butterfly brooch made by a nice jeweler, I might have been telling you $1,000 to $1,500.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: But it's Van Cleef and that's a big deal. This piece today, at auction, would be $4,000 to $6,000.
GUEST: Very nice, thank you.
APPRAISER: You're going to wear it?
GUEST: I think I will. (chuckles) Although I do have granddaughters who are, are eyeing it, so I may have to share.
APPRAISER: (laughs)
