GUEST: Quite a number of years ago, my father purchased this for my mother. I believe it was purchased in San Francisco, and she gave it to me about ten years ago.
APPRAISER: Okay. And have you ever had it appraised or had anybody look at this piece before?
GUEST: Yes, I did. Um, we brought it to a jeweler in Palm Desert, and he was unable to appraise it because he wasn't quite sure what it was.
APPRAISER: I see, okay. Well, it's a lovely piece of jewelry. It's set throughout with small rose-cut diamonds, and the bottom here is a carved agate shell. And what's so beautiful about this particular piece is that not only is it a fluted shell, but they've carved it to coordinate the banding in the agate with the actual lip of the black-lipped oyster. And in the center here, we have this little dangling pearl. It's wonderful. The beauty of this piece was, when I turned it over, on the back, there were some hallmarks.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And the hallmarks were in Russian and in Cyrillic. And the two initials on here are the initials that represent Fabergé.
GUEST: We know that name.
APPRAISER: So you've heard that name before.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: So I, I'm happy to confirm with you the piece is by Fabergé.
GUEST: Wonderful.
APPRAISER: It dates from about 1880. I would say that at auction, you can expect a piece like this to fetch somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000.
GUEST: Wow, that's great. Thank you very, very much.
APPRAISER: Well, it's my pleasure. I'm glad we've had a chance to see this and be able to talk about it.
