My Gold(ish) Flatware

Gold flatware is right there at the top of the list of shit bloggers like, and with my love of gold, you know I've been pining for my own set the moment I first laid eyes on some a few years ago. Having said that, it was also pretty high on the list of shit I absolutely didn't need or have money for, particularly in the DC-area condo where dinner parties were an impossibility. After moving back to Tennessee, however, an interest in/ability to throw dinner parties combined with my discovery of antiquing finally brought a set of gold(ish) flatware into my life. Read on for more pics, why it's gold(ish), and what you can learn from my experience if you too are on the lookout for some gold-tone flatware.

My set is an 11-piece place-setting for 12 people plus 12 serving pieces. I'm not even sure what purpose all of the pieces serve; however, I nabbed this 144-piece set for less than a buck a piece at a local antique mall -- the Gas Lamp. I had actually come upon the set within a couple of weeks of moving back to Nashville. Most of the pieces were actually still individually-wrapped, but I let it go because I couldn't tell if it was gold-tone or just tarnished.

I returned around Christmas-time, and I discovered that it was still there and marked a bit cheaper than the previous time. This time, I also spotted the "nickel-bronze" marking on the back and figured that the bronze was indeed giving it a goldish-tone. By this time, we'd also thrown a dinner party and discovered we didn't have enough flatware to serve more than 6 people. For less than a dollar a piece, I figured what the hell.

Next came the fun part of polishing all 144 pieces. Um, yeah. That's a whole lotta flatware.

The internets told me to soak the pieces in white vinegar, give them a rinse, and then a polish. They really weren't in bad shape to begin with. I did this as much as anything to just see if all the gold tone went away with the tarnish. In the pic above, a tarnished piece is all the way to the left, a polished piece in the center, and piece of my normal silverware is to the right for comparison. Obviously, it's not exactly gold-tone, but also not exactly silver-tone. Regardless, I'm a fan because it kind of reads whatever tone I want it to...in my head. Because I'm weird. But actually, in this project for Oh So Beautiful Paper, for example, it reads more on the gold side, don't you think?

Either way, I got a steal, right? Well, maybe not. It was tagged "Vietnam War-era" at the antique mall. I did some internet searching, and I learned that some parts of the country are just riddled with this stuff. These sets were largely made in Thailand and were sold in droves to American soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Many families never even used them and stowed them away thinking they'd be worth something someday. Now, these families are selling them, many still in their original wrappings (like mine), and because the markets are flooded with them, you can get them for a great deal. In fact, according to this article, I may have actually paid at the top of the range for them. eBay has tons of 'em, in fact. Personally, I don't have any regrets. Without knowing what I know now, I doubt very seriously that I would have ever dropped a hundred bucks on flatware from eBay.

What do you think of my flatware? Have you ever dropped some dollar bills on something and later found out that maybe you didn't get the best deal in the world?