GUEST: I have an aunt who lived in Richmond, Virginia, and she had collected these plates. And evidently she and a friend of hers both got some plates like this. And when the friend passed away, she also obtained those plates. And I don't know much about them. I do know that she paid $45 for each one of the plates, but as far as what the markings mean on the back and there are numbers on some of them, don't know what that means and would love to find out.
APPRAISER: Generally, these fall into a class of porcelains that we would call Royal Vienna-style porcelains. And that name refers to a company in Vienna, Austria, called the Royal Vienna Company, which went out of business in 1864.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: Now, none of these plates were actually made by that company.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: But they are made in the style of some things that that company made, and we today class them into that group of Royal Vienna style, meaning not actually made by them. Now, Royal Vienna-style porcelain usually have either portraits of beautiful women or they may have scenes like romantic lovers in the garden, people in 18th century dress, or they'll be scenes of mythology. If we took a look at the back of this plate here, we see a blue mark, which is sometimes underglaze and sometimes overglaze. Now, the original mark of the Royal Vienna Company was a shield, which would be shaped like that. A lot of people call this a beehive mark, because if we turn it upside down, the shield, it looks like a beehive. Now, if we look at this one here, this one also has a blue beehive, or Royal Vienna-style shield mark. This one says "Made in Germany" and then it has "Decor Carlsbad." Okay. Now, all of these, whenever you see the Royal Vienna-style mark on these, they're all fake marks. They were made by different companies, and these plates here, which we did not look at, have some somewhat similar marks. So what we're really looking at is the quality of the plate and the age. Now, both of these plates here are very high quality. The decoration is entirely hand-painted, all the decoration on the rim is raised, hand-worked gold, and when they were new, they were very expensive to make around the 1890s. The one nearest you is similar to that, but it is not hand-painted. It is a complete decal and the decoration is printed-- even the gold designs on the edge are printed-- and not hand done.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: It's also from the same time. This plate here is from the 1950s.
GUEST: Oh, you're kidding.
APPRAISER: Made in the style of the rest, but is not all that old compared to the others. And, again, it's all decals. Let's talk about values of these. Now, the one that's not very old here, a retail prize is probably about $10 or $20.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: It's very pretty, it's very decorative, but it's not great quality.
GUEST: Got it.
APPRAISER: The one that's a little older but not hand-painted is probably worth more in the $50 to $75 range.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Again, it's antique, it's very pretty, it's very decorative; not worth very much. These, which are really great, are wonderful quality, would retail between $1,000 and $1,500 each.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER: They are really, really wonderful plates and very desirable. So that's the difference between a thousand-dollar plate and a $10 plate.
GUEST: Big difference. Well, I'm glad that you differentiated because I had no clue about these. I couldn't tell one from the other, so thank you so much. That is very interesting.
