Goodbye, Chateau Rose

[darkemeralds]

Earlier today I sent my pal Todd out the door with my grandmother's silverware and instructions to sell it.* He came back an hour and a half later with an envelope full of cash.**



The purpose of this exercise was twofold: First, I've been wanting to be free of that silverware for years. It's been in a tarnish-resistant white leatherette case at the back of a cupboard, an unseen and untouched albatross around my neck, for as long as I've lived in this house. Sentiment, tradition, and an unexamined attachment to the belief that Real Silverware means you've really joined the middle class, have kept me hanging on to it, ironically right through the decline and fall of said middle class.

And second, I needed the money to help fund my bedroom remodel.


Totally not my style, either.

The daughters and granddaughters of the mid-20th century are ridding themselves of the impractical flatware by the ton, so the family silver is only collectible if it's in mint condition. And it's only in mint condition if it was in a family even more aspirational than mine--that is, one who never actually used the Good Silver.

Twelve place settings of Chateau Rose are, therefore, worth nothing but the melt value of their silver content (about 2000 grams all told). Todd and the broker arrived at what I'm confident was a very fair deal. And I'm free of the albatross.

So goodbye, Chateau Rose and hello particleboard. Screw half-century-old middle-class pretensions. I want IKEA wardrobes and a new bed.

*It is a sad fact of life even today that an affable six-foot-six man will get a better deal than I will from the guy who does business under the WE BUY GOLD sign. Besides, Todd likes people and new experiences. He reports having had a wonderful time transacting business in a fascinating world that doesn't normally overlap his or mine at any point. I bought him lunch.

**I...have never actually had hundred dollar bills before. Wow. So Benjamin. Many sketchy. Very tracking strip. Wow. I am not comfortable with cash. I have made it go away.

Comments

[branchandroot]

*rueful* Yeah, my inherited silver was so corroded from sitting ignored at the back of the drawer by the sink it wasn't even acceptable to melt. Of course, it amounted to three serving spoons and a handful of /extremely/ mismatched forks, so. A full set sounds much more lucrative. Onward to IKEA!

[darkemeralds]

The beauty of selling the stuff for scrap was that scratches, mismatches, and missing teaspoons had no bearing on the price. Grams, grams, grams--that's all that mattered.

What's weird, looking back, is that we ended up living barefoot and eating dinner around a picnic table, driving a rusted-out Datsun and generally not giving a crap about middle-class propriety. Mine was a weird, split-personality family that actually had only the briefest moment in the gentle sunlight of Middle Class America. And yet...silverware on the table, all of my growing up years.

[pinesandmaples]

And I'm one of those granddaughters trying to buy someone's used silver because I want it without buying new. I want china, too...but from the thrift store.

[darkemeralds]

I know just what you mean. I do like silverware, and before I recognized the fake-aspirational and classist beliefs that sterling flatware represented, I started collecting m own set, one fork and spoon at a time (thank you, internet) in the pattern I'd been in love with since the age of twelve, when I first stared at it, amazed, in a case at Liberty House in Waikiki.

It took me about five years to amass four basic place settings plus a couple of teaspoons, making heavy use of eBay, Replacements Ltd, and just once a silver broker. I enjoy it every day because it's wonderfully heavy in the hand, and just my style, and objectively beautiful. I would sell it only as a desperate last resort.

I did spend some time and energy trying to manifest a whole set of my pattern via the Law of Attraction but alas, the Force was not strong enough in me. Still, thinking that way caused me to tell everyone I knew that I was looking for Georg Jensen Caravel sterling flatware. My sister, as a result, gave me a spoon for my birthday and it was one of the best birthday presents I've ever gotten. For the rest, I had an alert on eBay for years, and about half my set came that way.

I may not believe in magic manifestation per se, but I'm a big fan of focused intention.

[pinesandmaples]

Georg Jensen designed my college's class ring. It's a thing of beauty so I understand why you can get pulled in by their work.

[ranunculus]

I'm one of those daughters that grew up with silverware, went out and got my own silver plate in college, eventually wore that set out and replaced it.
I like the feel of silver in my hand and I like the way food tastes when I use it. Not so happy about the cleaning part but....
Fun to see how differently we approach these things!

[darkemeralds]

I like those characteristics, too--especially the feel of silver in the hand. And it's only fair to disclose, after the above diatribe on classism, that I do have a set of silver of my own. Given what I've come to understand about my own family's relationship to The Silverware, I don't think I'd go after sterling flatware today, but, having already collected a small set piece by piece in a pattern that's more my style, I do enjoy and appreciate it.

I mass-clean mine a couple of times a year with the aluminum/salt/soap method. It's not the same as actual polishing with silver cream, but it's an insta-magic tarnish zapper which removes zero molecules of silver and involves no rubbing or scrubbing.

[toft]

Congratulations!

[darkemeralds]

The Bemjamins! The Benjamins! They stare at me with their doleful Benjamin Franklin eyes, scarier than clowns. I'm amazingly uncomfortable with cash--who knew?

But yes, the little stack o' bills represents both a psychic liberation and about 80% of my proposed IKEA extravaganza, so I've put Benny and his eyes where I can't see them till tomorrow morning when I go convert them to ones and zeros at the credit union.

[toft]

You could draw tiny little sunglasses on each one.

[darkemeralds]

Ha!

[toft]

Hahaha, awesome.