GUEST: I brought this pin in the shape of a butterfly. I was asked by a friend to go to an estate sale. The estate was from a prominent family in our area, and there were quite a few higher-end, nicer items and I was able to purchase this at the auction. I bought it for my wife.
APPRAISER: Huh.
GUEST: And that's 2015.
APPRAISER: Well, I've always wanted to start an appraisal with the two words "biogenic silica." That's opal, silica from the oceans. Over millions of years, plankton, algae, diatoms-- it compresses, and that's basically what opal is. Now, opal is found in many, many places. But this type of opal, where you see all this fire and these flashes most likely came from an area in Australia called Lightning Ridge. It has these huge deposits of this opal that they still mine to this day. On the Mohs hardness scale, it's a relatively soft stone. It's not like sapphires or diamonds. So you have to be careful when you work with it. It's delicate.
GUEST: Delicate.
APPRAISER: If you go back in history, the ancient Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians. The whole tie-in between the magical powers of opal and then the metamorphosis and the just general free spirit that butterflies bring to people.
GUEST: Hm, right.
APPRAISER: And you have a great combination here. It became very popular in Victorian period, the mid-1800s, especially insects and bugs. Opals are sometimes, been said to be bad luck.
GUEST: Oh, no. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Have you ever heard that?
GUEST: No, I hadn't.
APPRAISER: (laughing)
GUEST: I don't need any bad luck.
APPRAISER: In 1829, Sir Walter Scott wrote that book "Anne of Geierstein," and there was a baroness of Arnheim in the book, and she was given an opal as a talisman...
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And a drop of holy water falls on the opal, the opal loses its color...
GUEST: Oh, my, no.
APPRAISER: She dies.
GUEST: She dies. Great.
APPRAISER: So for a long time, people didn't buy opals. And Queen Victoria said, "This is a bunch of nonsense." She bought a bunch of it for wedding jewelry and she dismissed it. I'm born in October, it's my birthstone. So I'm with that it's, it's, it's all good.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: You have two little cabochon ruby eyes. Here you have an old
European-cut diamond. It's approximately one-fifth of a carat. You know what you have here?
GUEST: I'm gonna guess ruby.
APPRAISER: Right. So the first thing I did is, when I looked at it, I wanted to see if it was a ruby. Synthetic rubies have been around since the mid-1800s. And if you see, I'm gonna take this U.V. light. Can you see how it's glowing?
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Because of this reaction to the U.V. light, man hasn't altered the state of the stone to make it better.
GUEST: Great.
APPRAISER: It tells me it's all original. The frame is made out of 18-karat yellow gold. We can look up inside and there's actually a mark up in there.
GUEST: I've been looking for a mark since 2015.
APPRAISER: (laughing)
GUEST: And I, I couldn't find the mark.
APPRAISER: So it does say 18-karat.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: I didn't find the mark telling me it's English or French or American.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Looks English to me, looks Victorian, probably 1875 through the early 1900s. In addition to the 18-karat yellow gold, you'll see the body in the center is, is this dark color-- it's actually silver that's been heavily oxidized. Should I ask you what you paid for it?
APPRAISER: There's some debate between my wife and I. I believe that I paid a little over $500. She thinks closer to $1,000. So we'll, we'll say some, we'll say she's right. I'll say $1,000.
APPRAISER: I'm gonna go with $750.
GUEST: Somewhere in there-- $750. Somewhere in the middle.
APPRAISER: (laughs) In my opinion, it's like $750 per wing, easy. Okay?
GUEST: Oh, my, geez. (chuckles) Okay, wonderful.
APPRAISER: I'm going to go with, at auction, $3,000 to $5,000 today.
GUEST: Great. Wonderful, excellent. Thank you, thank you very much.
