Tiffany Engine-Turned Heart Jewelry, ca. 1945

Appraised on: August 1, 2009

Appraised in: Phoenix, Arizona

Appraised by: Berj Zavian

Category: Jewelry

Episode Info: Phoenix (#1413)

Originally Aired: April 19, 2010

IMAGE: 1 of 4  

Appraisal Video: (2:12)

GUEST: Well, they were passed down from my grandma, and she had a large collection of jewelry, and this was one of the sets that I got.

APPRAISER: I know you know that the piece is a Tiffany.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: They are stamped in a very peculiar place. They are stamped on the little gold stem. It's hard to see and difficult to do. The next thing on this, you notice that they're all hearts. These are not a set.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: There's many, many pieces that have the hearts incorporated into the piece. The other thing about this, all the hearts are engine-turned. That's an engraving machine that puts on the little lines in their ray effect, and if you look at them, they're all perfect. They're all small diamonds. You have roughly about three-quarters of a carat of diamonds in the three pieces. And you told me about the green stones.

GUEST: I thought they were maybe peridot, because she had some other pieces that were peridot.

APPRAISER: Well, you have emeralds are green, peridots are green, but these are garnets.

GUEST: Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: And everybody thinks garnets are red. There are 11 different kinds of garnets. This is one of the rarest. The green variety is called the demantoid, and these over here are fairly large for demantoids. Many demantoids are all tiny, small ones like this. Tiffany did not make all their jewelry. They had outside help, and they would send it to different factories, and these people that worked for them were all perfectionists and Tiffany would pass judgment on it. These are somewhere between 1945 and 1948. That's when they were made. Was your grandmother in New York at that time?

GUEST: Yes, she was.

APPRAISER: And these come from New York.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: You have roughly about two carats of demantoids, which is a lot of demantoids. They're 14-karat gold. I totaled them up, and I would say on a retail value, somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness. That's wonderful.