From Russia, With No Love Whatsoever...

Things on the slow side these last two weeks or so as people sat on the sidelines, I guess, and wait to make sure the country's financial news was really as good as people were saying.

Upticking stock market, lower jobless rates, a few good economic indicators we thought would get people feeling good about spending again but nosireee, not these last two weeks.

Sure, we sold a nice Plains Indian pipe bag (thanks, Norm) and some lower end WWII things - all to nice people, but nowhere near the high-volume, high-end sales of yore. One interesting tale involved a call we made to a house in San Francisco, the lady adamant that we appraise her antiques.

She was interesting, let's put it that way. Rather brusque and not a lot of fun to be around. I resolved to "get in, get out" as she was making rather pointed comments about our pricing and services.

Long story short she didn't have much at all until I got to an old desk, partner's type and nice enough - I put it down as English in origin. She was hovering, jabbering on about stuff and distracting me - so much so that I almost passed one of the desk drawers, which was balky and unseated.

"There's something wrong with it," she said. "But that shouldn't hurt the price, right? It's early 18th Century..."

"Twentieth," I responded, and shouldn't have... but what the hell. About 1910. Nothing spectacular. I worked on the drawer a little more and quickly realized something had fallen down behind it. Shifting drawers revealed the problem as a lovely little sterling silver czarist military jetton fell out of the carcass and landed with a lovely warm feel in the palm of my hand.

Nice marks, all Cyrillic lettering and three piece construction... I guessed it's age at about 1890 and probably from one of the higher end military academies. I didn't have as long as I'd like to study it because she snatched it from me.

"What's this?" she said. I told her. I had a sinking feeling when I did but nevertheless, I told her. The badge disappeared into her sweater pocket as she prattled on about thieves and con men and how she'd had such good luck with ebay.

I was heartsick. In my hand and gone, probably to be misidentified and raffled off at the earliest opportunity. I did my job and left her, still grooving on the way that little badge dropped right into my palm.

And that's the way it goes in the antiques biz.