GUEST: Well, my grandparents got it at an auction probably in the '60s. It was in my house growing up, and I always admired it, and so my mom gave it to me a few years ago. I know that my grandfather, my mom thinks he paid $500 for it at an auction, and that my grandmother was not pleased. She thought that was too much.
APPRAISER: Too much money.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Do you happen to know the maker?
GUEST: Tiffany.
APPRAISER: Tiffany. It's a hard label to miss.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: It does date from that time period. It's a smaller version of a giant clam. These great flutings along the top here. This you'd see on a mature clam, for those mollusk fans out there. It is Tiffany, it is sterling. The interesting part is it's made in Mexico, and we know that based on the hallmarks that we're going to see inside in the top half of the shell. If you look here, it's in the lower right hand side, it says "Tiffany Sterling," it says "Mexico," and then there is a little hallmark here on the side, which is probably Taxco, which is the region of Mexico that it was produced.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: This beautiful gold wash interior would have been throughout. There was a surge for Mexican sterling in the mid to late 1960s, especially jewelry. So they were known to employ well-known Taxco and Mexican makers to make the jewelry, put a Tiffany stamp on it, and sell it in the United States. William Spratling is the best known, probably, Mexican sterling maker, one of the most collected here. That was sort of the twilight of his career. Maybe they were trying to get in on that market, I'm not sure. It does look a lot like a decorator that was working for them, a woman named Janna Thomas. She worked for them in Mexico from about 1965 to the early 1970s. Not a super-known person, not a highly collected person. It doesn't really matter with this shell because it says "Tiffany" on the inside.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: So your grandfather paid about $500 for it in the 1960s.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: I think in an auction setting, we're looking at about $3,000 to $5,000.
GUEST: Okay. Thank you.
