Pewter pictures and hallmarks...

[Leoparddog]

Yes they are kinda neat and I'd probably only melt the ones that are broken up already. several of them are missing landing gear or have busted propellers which would ding their collector value seriously. If one or two are in good shape, I'd resell them. If there was a B29 in the batch I'd give that to my mom as my now deceased step-dad flew those in WWII

[kevin c]

My father flew in the superforts over Japan. The "Big Fat Momma". Lead navigator and bombardier for his squadron. Like many of his generation he didn't talk much about those times, though he wore his DFC with pride and sometimes joked that during missions he liked to sit on his flak jacket "because that's where they're shooting from".

[JimB..]

Today I acquired 99lbs of pewter and this thing. It’s over a foot tall, maybe 4” in diameter and weighs 3.5lbs. It is painted green. It’s a flask for something. Maker is apparently Gerhard Anton von Glan which makes it 1800’s. Looks like pressure damage.

Would you melt it?

[jsizemore]

I'd have to hang on to that one!

[kevin c]

When folks lament the melting down of collectible pewter, my understanding is that they're thinking of items that are old, rare or of unusual craftsmanship or artistic merit, none of which applies to modern food service pewter, which are mostly reproductions of colonial era designs, or to kitschy modern frames and decorations with no artistic merit or collextor's value.

Your item there hits the first three criteria. I personally would be reluctant to melt it. With that in mind, I probably wouldn't buy it in the first place. But if it was part of a 99# score with the rest of it being usable and reasonably priced, I'd take it, to keep as a curio or turn around and sell to a collector.

[JimB..]

Yes, it was just in this pile of stuff that is mostly not interesting. There is an old looking German .2l measuring cup and a cute lidded creamer that my wife wants for display and I’ll have to go through the rest more carefully to determine age, I usually do that as items are going into the pot.

I appreciate the input, I’ll be keeping this piece, may even pay someone to restore it.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

Lucky thing that much of the pewter is down right ugly. Keeps the price down. I melted down a candle holder recently and I kind of regret it. It would have been useful. When these lock downs end there could be good scrounging at last day estate sales and so on.

[JimB..]

So in my pile were 8 small wine glasses. They are fairly bright, and marked “siam pewter.” When I bend them them make a crinkling noise, as if there is glass inside the metal being ground up. The metal isn’t thick enough to actually have anything inside, and there isn’t anything on the outside breaking up. It’s strange, any ideas?

[dbosman]

Made for tourists and export. Some of it has value. Try to find a comparable. Goblet sets usually had eight. Good luck.

[kevin c]

JimB, that sounds like "tin cry", an indication you have the real thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_cry
I believe that there is tin mined in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and a pewter industry associated with it.

[JimB..]

Well that’s cool, have never heard it before. Thanks!

[kevin c]

I've only heard it on a few pieces of pewter. Most that I have, touch marked as the real thing, doesn't do it at all. I guess it depends on the alloy, maybe being a characteristic of pure tin or close to it compared to the low nineties percentages typically found in most pewter.

I do know that there was and maybe still is a regional variation in the tin content of pewter alloys, with southeast Asian pewter often having the highest. I've segregated out southeast Asian pewter and other stuff marked 95% in hopes that it all is higher tin content than the European standard of 92.5%, but I'd have to melt it down together as one lot and have it tested to be sure.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

Just smelted up about 10 pounds of quadruple plate. Was kind of suspicious about it's composition but it melted readily and turned out fine I think. Interestingly enough, at least one piece had some copper in it. Probably one of the heavy serving platters. The copper showed up clearly in the dross. Bought it because it was heavy and bent easily and that seems to have worked out. The ingots do not react to muriatic acid. Would rather stick to hall marked pewter but that has been feast or famine in the junk stores.

[44magLeo]

I recently bought a box of stuff at a Thrift Shop. It had a bunch of stuff I could use. So the $5 was well spent.
In the stuff was an old spoon. It looks like silver. The marking on the back has what looks like a flower with 3 petals but upside down, Wm with the up at the top of the W, Rogers, a 5 pointed star then a number 3.
Anybody know anything about silver?
Leo

[William Yanda]

That might mean more to a pewter collector who values "antiqueness" rather than its ability to alloy with lead. Rarely does a pewter item have intrinsic value. I remember finding a set of 8, 9 inch plates by International Silver that I sold to California rather than melting them down. A lady wanted to use them for dinners with a colonial theme.

[Dunross]

I had just about stopped looking for pewter for lack of finding any, but one tankard. Stopped at a little mini-flea market last Saturday looking for some cast iron and in the space of ten minutes had found and bought ten pounds of pewter for $35. Given that Roto Metals is getting $20 a pound for tin now I was happy to buy it!

There was, of course, a complication. I knew as soon as I got home with the stuff my wife wasn't going to let me melt it! Sure enough when I laid it on the table she immediately started looking it up. Fortunately it's all fairly new stuff by Newburyport Towle (I believe now out of business) and not fetching much in the way of prices. I'll probably have to let her have the lidded wine decanter, but the rest of it is bound for the melting pot.

The five Jefferson cups are engraved with the name of a truckstop up in the northeast with a "in memory" statement. The decanter came with sixteen cups! The tray is only pewter in the rim. The flat part is a woodgrained plastic. The fellow I bought it from travels the local auction circuit. He said he'll pick up otherwise unsaleable pewter if I'll buy it so I have his number to phone him once a month. We'll see.

Now I need something to cast small ingots in.



I've been trying to educate a friend of mine who likes to go yard saling as to what pewter looks like so he can be on the lookout. He was with me for this one so maybe he'll take it more seriously now since he's also my shooting partner!

Edited to add: I'm borrowing one of your photos Imashooter2 from 2014 since I can't get a clear shot of the hallmark on my stuff. This is Newburyport Towle.

[imashooter2]

Great score! Congratulations!

[kevin c]

That really is a great score. Even better is making the connection with somebody who's actually going to do the searching and buying for you. Talk about rare!

[imashooter2]

The long term contact might be even better than the score!

The two small cavities in Lee ingot molds poured shallow are good for Pewter. Another fellow uses the bottoms of beverage cans to pour coins. A wrap of duct tape around 6 would make a nice stable platform if pouring from a ladle.

[Dunross]

Just finished reading the whole doggone thread. What a slog!

But, I feel much more educated now about what I'm looking at. We'll see if that translates into anything in the yard sales.