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 Replies: 12 / Views: 2,208 |
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New Member
United States
2 Posts |
When I was growing up an old family friend always used to tell us about a spoon she had with a few coins embedded in it. Well, she moved out of the country and died a few years ago and we ended up with the spoon. It's got a 1903 gold dollar from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the fair, but it also has two tokens from the fair as well. I've seen the items listed individually but never embedded in the handle of a spoon. I'll post some pictures. Is this a rare item or someone's homemade souvenir? *** Edited by Staff to remove YELLING ****** this also applies to SUBJECT lines ***   |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1080 Posts |
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CCF Master Historian of USA Commemoratives
 United States
12261 Posts |
Spoons were a popular souvenir at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition - many varieties were available. Most spoons sold had commemorative designs on the handle, the bowl or both but were otherwise unadorned. The bowl design of your spoon, for example, was sold at the fair as a spoon without any other items (coins, jewels, etc.) attached.
Some spoons, however, were sold with attached coins or tokens. In some cases, the coin/token is found embedded into the handle, in other cases it is incorporated into the bowl.
It's hard to be 100% sure from your images, but your spoon does appear to be a legitimate souvenir item from the fair.
These items are hard to value because they don't come to the market with much frequency. A few years ago, Heritage sold two spoons from the Expo that were similar. They each had a single gold dollar attached to the bowl. One sold for $1,840 and the other for $2,990.00.
If you decide to sell the piece, I would suggest you consider consigning it to a larger auction house. My experience suggests that most local coin dealers are not familiar enough with such pieces to properly assign a fair value to them. If your piece is determined to be genuine, it could draw similar bidding levels to those above (or maybe even higher).
Good luck!
Collecting history one coin or medal at a time! (c) commems. All rights reserved.
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Moderator
United States
188052 Posts |
Interesting. Thank you for sharing and  to the Community! |
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Moderator
United States
15403 Posts |
Indeed ... Really appreciate commems insight into the potential provenance and value of this spoon. What a great ending it would be to discover that this family heirloom might be worth a few thousand dollars. I humbly suggest that commems is the CCF trusted expert in such matters .. and that you consider his informed advise as solid and reputable. David Take a look at my other hobby ... http://www.jk-dk.art |
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New Member
 United States
2 Posts |
Thank you all for your interest and information about this piece. Especially to you, commens. I called a few coin stores in the Los Angeles area and as commens mentioned they didn't really have the familiarity to quote a price or give much history and admitted as much. They were however very interested in buying it.
I wish I knew where our family friend had acquired it and from whom. I've seen one other picture of it online and assume that it doesn't see the light of day all that much.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3453 Posts |
Teletrade sells the individual tokens (there are on my wish list) - if you want an idea of what they have sold for slabbed, search All Demoninations, All Years, all grades and put "la expo" in the keyword search. That might help you get some information to come up with a price. I hope it is authentic, that is a really neat piece!  EDIT: Forget what I said - go with Commems' info, he's da man when it comes to this  Edited by CoinsKelly
08/14/2013 09:19 am
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New Member
United States
1 Posts |
Having just registered here, the rules which prohibit posts like this one from a new member should still be fresh in your mind. No harm, no foul, but we can't allow your post to stand.
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Valued Member
United States
69 Posts |
Your spoon is gorgeous, thanks for sharing !!
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Valued Member
United States
469 Posts |
This would be a great addition to any commem collection. If it has a lot of meaning to you I would keep it regardless of the price quoted.
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
The creme de la creme of ANY spoon collection!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5205 Posts |
Very nice.
I would think it would have multiple crossover appeal (coin collecting, spoon collecting, Expo Fair collecting)
If you like it keep it.
If you don't like it I would follow Commems advice as to the sales venue and buy something you like. While your new item won't be a true hand me down heirloom at least everytime you look at the item you like it will remind you of the story of how you funded the purchase.
I think there was someone here whose first post was a full set of Pan Am expo coins which they cosigned to auction and got like $70K for (and something like $3K for the empty box alone) I wonder what they bought with the money and hopefully remember the story behind their new purchase.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3453 Posts |
THAT story was a great one. The poster who had the Pan Pac set was helping liquidate for his great-aunt's care. One of my favorites, not only because he was a stand up guy but the way CCF helped him and his family. Here is the thread for a good read https://goccf.com/t/70766. |
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Replies: 12 / Views: 2,208 |
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Posted 08/11/2013 9:15 pm
