GUEST: My grandparents married in 1926, and they went to Europe, and particularly France, for their honeymoon, and she came back with these pieces and several others. My grandmother loved these pieces. She wore them a lot, my mom did. Both of them passed away when I was fairly young, so my sister and I inherited, and we've worn them and enjoyed them, but we don't know much about them.
APPRAISER: All right, well, the piece was made in France in about 1926. And really judging from the quality of the piece, it's certainly something that would have been made in Paris. You actually have a pave diamond set brooch. It's set in platinum. You've got a baguette diamond in the center, and then you have two tapered baguettes at either side of this piece. What's very unusual about this piece-- I just have to take it off and show you-- is the brooch itself is fully articulated. And this is where this gets a little bit more interesting. The actual brooch fitting on the back of this pin unscrews. And so you would take this brooch fitting off, and then you take this piece, and it would hang from this piece here. So what you have here is you have the original platinum and diamond chain, and then you have the original platinum and diamond bail. The aquamarine has been added. This piece would hang where the aquamarine is. What I would suggest you should do is probably at some point remove the aquamarine and have a good goldsmith look at it, and then rehang everything. All the pieces are there, for actually to put it all back together, and it's an incredible piece. It's absolutely wonderful. And to have the original chain, the original bail and the brooch, and the pendant fittings is quite something.
GUEST: So there's no way to know who made it?
APPRAISER: No, not unless we can find marks on it. There's nothing that I've been able to find so far.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Have you any idea as to the value of the piece at all?
GUEST: Not really. The brooch, I know my mom, I think she had it appraised back in the '70s somewhere, about $5,000, but again, I was young. It didn't really mean anything to me except I knew she'd done it. The rest of the pieces I don't think so.
APPRAISER: If you were to get the piece back in its original condition so it could be worn as a pendant and also as a brooch, I would say that if you had to replace this item, you would have to spend about $30,000.
GUEST: Whoa!
APPRAISER: So it's a little bit more than $5,000.
GUEST: My sister's going to be amazed.
