GUEST: My mother bought it here in New York City 55 years ago. It was described to her as a leaping ibex sharpening stone from what is now northwestern Iran-- Luristan was the way it was described-- and that it was from the second millennium B.C. And that is really all I know, except that we've all looked at it on my mother's mantelpiece for more than half a century and loved it, and I'm curious really about its age.
APPRAISER: Okay, well the age is the second millennium is absolutely right. The Luristan period is from about 1250 to about 500 B.C., and they were prolific manufacturers of bronze. This is a wonderful object. The regular soldiers and regular people of the day, all of whom would carry a knife for a weapon, would just carry the whetstone, and this is the whetstone, the stone part, to sharpen the knife with. And the elite would probably have them with this special handle. This is indeed an ibex on it. Very unusual to find the two together. Do you have any idea what it's worth?
GUEST: I have no idea. My mother paid $400 for it in 1959.
APPRAISER: So a guess?
GUEST: I assume, allowing for inflation, it's got to be worth at least $1,500 today, but I really don't know.
APPRAISER: I think in today's market, a good retail price would be between $3,000 and $5,000, so I think that's quite good.
GUEST: Well, probably fortunate I didn't know how to use it. It's never been touched for a long, long time.
APPRAISER: Right.
