I Guess Cuff Links Are Safe From Muggers

[Cufflink79]

Yesterday evening while watching "Mad Men", I saw a scene in which Roger and Joan were walking down a dark street, in a neighborhood that used to be a nice place. Just after Joan said "What happened to this place," a man approached them and he said to Roger, "Do you have the time?"

At which point he pulls out a gun and says to Roger "You know what to do." Roger gives him his watch, cash with money clip. ring, and wallet. Roger says "That's everything," the gunman says "What about her?" Roger thens forks over Joan's purse and ring. The gunman takes off but what really caught my eye was the gunman didn't ask for Roger's cuff links.

Which leads me to believe that most muggers don't think they can get anything for good links.

Best Regards,

Cufflink79

[Daedalus]

The mugger also forgot to take Joan's brooch.

[Jordan Marc]

If muggers knew what genuine Faberge and Carrington guilloche enamel double-sided cufflinks fetch at auctions and specialist dealers, they would have told the characters to keep their wallet and purse and hand over the links.

JMB

[Concordia]

The cufflink page on eBay was not at all strong in the 1960s.

[Costi]

If muggers knew what genuine Faberge and Carrington guilloche enamel double-sided cufflinks fetch at auctions and specialist dealers, they would have told the characters to keep their wallet and purse and hand over the links.

JMB

Oh, is that the difference between muggers and auction houses or specialist dealers...? (I hope I'm not offending anyone, I just couldn't help it)

[Jordan Marc]

Costi, if you're referring to money-grubbing dealers marking up vintage cufflinks to stratospheric prices or auction houses pulling numbers off the chandeliers to goose up the bidding beyond the bounds of reason, there is little that separates street muggers from the well-dressed greedygluts standing behind the auction lecturns or the bank of pretty young women yakking soto voce to urge on the phone bidders.

Auction houses these days cater mostly to collectors in Asia. Young well-dressed representatives flush with cash from their principals are the big players. Should someone else best their final bid, it is not unusual to be approached by the underbidder with a fat roll of cash in hand. These kids don't want to disappoint the collector back home. Do they know a genuine item from a fake? Not likely. They're merely errand boys with big buckelinos, told to bid on a particular lot. Fakers of fine jewellery are among the best forgers around, and collectors hellbent on having a pair of genuine Faberge or Carrington cufflinks would do well to thoroughly research the provenance of any lot being offered for sale, which means going way beyond the description written in the catalogue. Better still, and far less costly, would be to commission a bespoke pair of cufflinks or a dress set by an artisan jeweller.

JMB

[Costi]

JMB, yes, ordering is often the better possibility (unless one buys for the value of the antique, rather than the intrinsic beauty), even taking inspiration from (but not copying) originals.
After buying one of his paintings for something like 30 000 francs, a lady approached Picasso and asked him if he could tell her, now that she owned the painting, what it meant. The painter replied: "To me, it means 30 000 francs. To you, it means a Picasso!"

[shredder]

The stakeholders tend to understand instinctively the notion of 'willing buyer, willing seller', one of the more basic, underlying concepts of free market economy. People in the gallery can have difficulties getting their heads round it sometimes. I do not know whether the disparity really matters to either group except that the latter might be happier if they could manage not to wind themselves up over something that has nothing to do with them.