18/09/2026
It happens to us all, I presume, when we reach a ‘certain age’. We start looking back and wondering what on earth happened to the world, and finding ourselves talking about the ‘good old days’ — conveniently forgetting, of course, that they weren’t always quite as good as we remember them.
Perhaps nostalgia is like that. It softens the edges, warms the colours and somehow makes yesterday seem a little more precious.
And that word — precious.
I’ve been pondering the difference between precious and valuable. We tend to use them interchangeably, particularly in our rather money-driven world, where something is often considered valuable simply because someone is prepared to pay a great deal for it.
I don’t have a crystal ball. Well, actually, I do have one, but sadly I have never quite mastered the art of using it.
So when people ask me, ‘What is a good investment?’ my answer is invariably rather simple:
If you buy something because you’ve fallen in love with it, and you look at it every day and think, ‘Gosh, I really like this’, then I think it’s a pretty good investment.
Which brings me to something that happened a few days ago.
A gentleman, talking to me about investing in silver, told me quite bluntly that he would rather buy bullion than antiques.
And it took me straight back to the bad old days — the 1980s.
Those of us who remember them will remember the magnificent Georgian silver that was disappearing into melting pots. Georgian basting and serving spoons, tea and coffee services, great pieces of silver that had survived generations — all being melted down simply for the value of the metal.
For their owners, they were precious metal, and therefore valuable. And in a world where money was tight and the price of silver was rising, the temptation was considerable. Even some dealers joined in.
But what was being lost was worth so much more than the price of the metal.
Think about the hands that made these things. The hours of work. The extraordinary skill of the silversmith. The people who commissioned them and saved for them.
A Georgian tea service, for example, was rarely bought all at once.
Money was often scarce. A family might buy the teapot, then save for years before adding the cream jug, and longer still before they could afford the sugar bowl. Which is why you sometimes find a service today with different dates on each piece — a tiny glimpse into the lives and circumstances of the people who owned it.
And perhaps that is what makes old silver so fascinating.
It isn’t simply silver.
It is time.
It is craftsmanship.
It is aspiration.
It is family history.
It is the memory of a wedding, a christening, a grandparent, a first house — or simply a family who saved, little by little, to own something beautiful.
So perhaps precious is not always valuable.
And valuable is very often not precious.
Here are a few of our precious — and valuable — pieces of silver.
And remember, Saturdays we are at our Echlin Street store, just in case you want to see something precious, or something valuable, or both.
