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Family Treasures - Edition 8
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Family Treasures Jill Churchill, who writes on antiques and
collectables for YOURS magazine, continues her series Who uses a cigarette case (even
if you haven’t given up smoking)? In, say,
fifty years time, it’s not difficult to see that collectors will be fighting
to get their hands on a genuine unaltered cigarette case of the early 20th
century, the ‘casing’ of cigarettes by then being considered a quaint old
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In the course of time, there may even be a difference in price between the early (1890-1913) cases, which were small, before the coming of filter-tips, and the post-1914 larger cases. Nothing but the melt-down value Meanwhile, though, the news is not good. The silver case that someone gave father or grandfather for a 21st birthday present is rarely worth more than £20, or something like its ‘melt-down value’ - ie the going prize per ounce of the silver. One dealer advised: ‘better to use the case to carry your business cards or your pills, dear.’ Exceptional cases? The enamelled ones, where the metal has been fancied-up with a bright pattern or a picture. A case with a stark geometrical design in those oh-so-20s colours of orange and black and yellow might be £300-£400 to a collector of Art Deco. Pictures that tell a different story Cases with pictures on them can be valuable, though it depends on the picture. If grandfather was a motoring enthusiast and had an enamelled case depicting a car, now of vintage variety, it’s worth could be upwards of £450 - that was the price of one model sold at Christie’s three years ago. And if he was, as grandma might have said, ‘a bit of a lady’s man’ ... his cigarette case might pay off as mild erotica, but only if its design carried a racy pin-up of the 1920s. One sold at at Phillips recently for £750. Values are still higher if an unclothed lady hides inside a plain outer case: I’ve seen examples selling for £1,000 to £3,000 depending on the quality of the enamelling (it mustn’t be chipped) and the, er, degree of nudity. Always give an old silver case a careful clean if it’s highly engraved or embossed and look for a hallmark. If the mark seems to be in a foreign alphabet, take it to be checked by a jeweller: it may be Russian, brought here by post-Revolution refugees and now desirable as a piece of history.
For subsequent editions - see the laterlife interest index
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