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The old guy at the flea market in Chillicothe taught me more about my grandma's hand mirror in 10 minutes than 2 appraisals did
I almost walked right past his booth last Sunday because it was just a fold out table with a few dusty boxes on it, nothing fancy like the glass cases up front. I had my grandma's silver hand mirror in my bag, the one with the little flowers on the back, because I'd been dragging it to two different appraisers who both shrugged and said it was probably a cheap souvenir. This guy picks it up, turns it over twice, and says "see how the flowers sit kind of low on the handle? That's a repair, somebody reattached it a long time ago, and whoever did it used the wrong solder, which is why it's dark there." He showed me the seam I'd looked at a hundred times and never really seen. Then he points at the tiny stamp on the rim and says it's from a shop in Wheeling that only ran about 10 years around 1900, and that the repair is probably older than most of the stuff in his booth. He didn't ask for a dime, just handed it back and said "that mirror's been loved, you can tell." I stood there kind of stunned because both appraisers spent maybe 3 minutes each on it and acted like I was wasting their time. Now I want to know what else I've been told is junk just because somebody didn't look close enough. Has anyone else had a random booth person spot something the pros missed?
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