A few years back, I came across an old tarnished silver tray at a Somerville second-hand store. It was buried under piles of other trays, but this one stood out. The outer edge of the tray was all I could see and it was hand-engraved.

Now, they usually only hand-engrave the good stuff. And this was one of them. It cost $10 and when I got it home, I looked up the small hallmarks stamped underneath. The tray had a small rice-sized hallmark with the letters “P S” and other small stamps consisting of a lion, a crown, a portrait of a man and the letter “I.”

Looking it up, I found that the tray was made by Paul Storr of London in 1804 and weighed 60 troy ounces. The engraving that I saw on the rim was a coat of arms for a Duke in Scotland. This tray looked to me that it was used under plant pots recently as it had greenish circles where a brass or copper plant pot had sat. I used a bit of silver polish and some elbow grease to remove the circles.

Contacting Sotheby’s in New York City, they told me that they were having an English Silver auction in a few months and wanted it for their sale. I mailed it down and saw it in their catalog a few weeks later. The tray sold for $5000. I don’t know who bought it but I’ll bet it probably went back to Scotland.

Had this tray been made by a less popular maker – someone other than Paul Storr – it would have not been handled by an auction house as big as Sotheby’s and would have sold for the weight of the silver which at the time was about $500. “Star power” of the maker is important in silver as it is in paintings, furniture, carpets, etc.

How this tray ended up in Somerville hundreds of years after it was made, I don’t know.

It’s important to label your items so they don’t just get tossed into the trash, given to a second-hand store for a small tax write-off or destroyed.

Bob Adams has been in Somerville 27 years but was a frequent visitor prior to moving here. He worked as a jeweler in a few shops in his younger years, owned his own shop for a bit, sold real estate for 10 years and is always hunting for his next treasure. He has been an antique and collectibles dealer for 30 years. He can be reached at 27winter@gmail.com