Word: silvers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Chicken Little pessimists, who had bet on bullion and other precious metals, were made to look prescient. Among the winners were people who had shrewdly put away dimes, quarters and half dollars minted before 1965; at year's end an original $1,000 in those almost pure silver coins was worth $16,300. But anybody who had put his money in a savings bank was a sucker; a $1,000 deposit declined in real value during the year to about $900, after inflation and taxes on the interest receipts...
Collectionitis is as pervasive as inflation, as euphoric as a drug high. Its grip reaches far beyond the roseate world of Rembrandts, Sèvres porcelain and Georgian silver. A vast subculture of acquisition is feeding on scarce objects of every conceivable description. Britons are busily unearthing-and auctioneers as busily selling-such objects of dubious virtue as antique typewriters, gramophones and biscuit tins. Americans, with more catholic taste for trivia, have enshrined such unlovely objets trouvés as old flyswatters, orange reamers, apple parers, Kraft cheese jars (a.k.a. "swanky swigs"), Mickey Mousiana, player pianos, Coke bottle tops, beer...
...months, such objects as ivory and jade pieces and antique silverware have all recorded huge price increases at auction. Among several categories of fine arts that experts believe to be underpriced but rapidly appreciating in value: 17th century old master drawings and prints; Victorian furniture, paintings, drawings, porcelain, silver and antiques of all kinds; Japanese pottery and porcelain, ivory and enamels; Italian baroque paintings and Renaissance statuary; American primitives; Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities. Also upward bound are American Indian artifacts, antique gold watches, rare manuscripts, books and autographs, Victorian and Edwardian jewelry, and art deco furniture. It seems that...
...also runs so-called Heirloom Discovery Days, on which for a small fee expert appraisers evaluate real and imagined treasures. A woman dropped in at its Los Angeles branch with a shoe box of attica that she had planned to give to the Salvation Army; the six Faberge silver-and-enamel pieces she unwrapped sold...
Enter the subterranean reservoir, as well as similar experiments at a South Dakota gold mine, a Utah silver mine and a Minnesota iron mine. Based on the number of protons in the cavity's water (more than 10³³), Physicists John Vander Velde of the University of Michigan, Frederick Reines of the University of California at Irvine, and their colleagues figure that there should be about 200 decay "events" per year...