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Subject:Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Corey Sat, Apr 05, 2014 IP: 193.169.154.224

I was hoping to get these for a few hundred dollars, but they sold for 1300, which is far over my current budget. They are very nice though, and probably also of the ming period as the description says, and then there has been some related beads at Christie's that also sold for a good price, but still ...

Link :JADE BEADS


Subject:Re: Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Joe Benevides Sun, Apr 06, 2014

You may be lucky. The link goes to a page that is no longer there. It may have been removed, which is normally only done when eBay has determined there was fraud, so they suspend the seller and delete all their listings (current and completed). If the seller was deleted soon after the sale, then they may have also been able to stop the transaction and refund the buyer's money. If it was a listing from China, it was almost certainly fraudulent.

Subject:Re: Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Corey Sun, Apr 06, 2014

Link didn't upoload. Try again.



Subject:Re: Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Corey Sun, Apr 06, 2014

Link doesn't work. It's item number 201055955170 at ebay. Just type it in the search-box and it should work.

Subject:Re: Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Mary Sun, Apr 06, 2014

It says the listing has been removed or is no longer available. I tried it twice.

Subject:Re: Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Paul Sun, Apr 06, 2014

Just a tip here: Whenever you see something of enduring interest on eBay or another auction site, download some photos to your own files. Add notes. Then you've got them for future reference.

Subject:Re: Damn! They sold for $1300!
Posted By: Corey Mon, Apr 07, 2014

It was a canadian seller and established dealer of antiques. And it was a 'private' held auction that generated a-lot-of-money(!). Perhaps that was the reason why..

Subject:Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Super Mon, Apr 07, 2014

I finally saw your five beads. But I believe the chance for any of them to be Ming dynasty, based on their material and appearance, IMHO, is close to nil. Please count yourself lucky in not winning this lot. The wooden stand on which those "jade" beads stand on may be older than the beads themselves. Their material may or may not be nephrite, it would be hard to tell without testing them, but their material are unlike anything I had seen before, especially for antique Chinese jade, except I saw similar and better material used to make some fake Hongshan jade beads which I own a few, tested to be nephrite, look better than those sold in this eBay lot. In short, stay far away from any expensive eBay jade items especially those that are listed outside USA. You will be much better off in trying to win a few jade items from reputable auction houses. It would be great if Lee and others will render their opinions. Of course, I can be wrong.

Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Tue, Apr 08, 2014

I allow myself to copy two of the pictures and hope I won't get sued. The material in my opinion is correct for the period and the lot had a provenance.

The seller was 'joanies_house_of_treasures'.





Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Wed, Apr 09, 2014

A link to a good ming jade in a material comparable to one of the beads below.

Antique mottled jade beads in different colors are sought after by some collectors including me.


Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Wed, Apr 09, 2014

A link to the canadian sellers store below.



URL Title :joanies_house_of_treasures


Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Super Wed, Apr 09, 2014

What provenances? eBay stories thar are a dime a thousand. No wonder somebody paid. 1.3 k for them

Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: MINGBLUE Thu, Apr 10, 2014

Maybe, these could be of interest. Personal collection. Enjoy!



Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Thu, Apr 10, 2014

Forgot to add a title to link to the ming jade sold at bonhams. Sorry 'bout that!

Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Fri, Apr 11, 2014

Nice beads you've got there. I got interested in jade beads a while ago and find it to be a really fascinating aspect of the hobby. Two of the most exiting jades I purchased last year were two beads that might be of the neolithic period. One of them is similar in shape and material to one posted on this forum earlier that has been made into a sword handle. See link.

URL Title :Neolithic Jade Bead Sword Handle


Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Sat, Apr 12, 2014

The other is a cong shaped jade bead in a material similar to the breathtaking neolithic jade huang sold at sotheby's for HKD 2,440,000.
Interesting that lot didn't have a provenance.







URL Title :Neolithic Jade Huang Sotheby\'s


Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Fri, Apr 11, 2014

Then I have a jade bracelet with 15 beads in a different mottled jade material that I belive might date to the ming period. There are some related beads for sale at ebay that are stated to be Han dynasty and the description says that the pattern represent the moon hare. (See link).

If someone here can confirm that the style goes back to Han and that the thing with the moon hare is true it would be great.

URL Title :Jade Beads at eBay


Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: MINGBLUE Sat, Apr 12, 2014

Ancient beads made into a bracelet. Personal collection.



Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: MINGBLUE Sat, Apr 12, 2014

Loose ancient beads. Personal collection.



Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Super Sun, Apr 13, 2014

The jade bead shown in the eBay link in your message was made of cheap serpentine that will not pass the scratch test coupled with its poor workmanship did not justify its price.

Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Tue, Apr 15, 2014

Did you buy it?

Subject:Re: Ming dynasty?
Posted By: Corey Sun, Apr 20, 2014

It was the thing with the moonhare I found to be interesting. Not the bead. But the yellowish green color is very typical for chinese nephrite. And hardened steel can actually scratch the softer types of nephrite. You must have a very sharp eye since you can tell from a picture this is serpentine. Wow!

Subject:Really need to listen, digest and learn!!!!
Posted By: Super Tue, Apr 22, 2014

Typical for Chinese nephrite? In what way?

There was NO confirmed nephrite ever being mined inside China. The major source of nephrite being used to "make" most of the archaic or antique Chinese jade carvings originated from Xinjiang, China, with best ones coming from Hetian, especially those collected from jade rivers. Xinjiang was never part of China during most of the Chinese dynasties due to consistent revolutions of the muslim people living there, it was not until Qing Emperor QianLong who had a reign of 61 years (actually much longer**)that he finally stopped the revolutions there and larger quantity of Hetian jade were being imported from Hetian to the Qing capital. That was one of the reasons why there were so many beautiful jade carving being made during the Qing dynasty. But even then, the supply of any raw Hetian jade were highly regulated by the Qing imperial government and were reserved mostly for the use of the emperor or those who had his permissions. Anybody who got caught with smuggling raw Hetian jade, like smugglers of salt, the penalty was DEATH (by chopping off their heads) some time not only the guilty parties, but their families or those who were nine times related to them. A pair of white Hetain jade bowls made during the QianLong reign, just material alone, cost 5,000 taels of silver. You can figure out how much that is in today's money.

There is no agreed upon standards in grading Hetian jade, they were mostly graded by their colors, with mutton-fat being the most sought after, white next, then white with green tint, celadon or green, yellow, black. But during my previous researches, truly YELLOW or BLACK Hetian jade are the rarest and very often deserve very high premiums. Lustrous celadon Hetian jade were also hard to find. As early as the late 1920s and early 1930s, beautiful and unique spinach jade were imported from Siberia, some of such material had these unique black spots/patches inside the material, were used to make some beautiful jade carvings. This was discussed in one of the jade books written by Professor S. Howard Hansford. I strongly recommend you to get some of his books and start reading before you will waste another dollar in buying any more jade carvings. Once a while, you can see a few pieces of these Siberian jade carving came on eBay, always attracted fierce competition and sold in thousands of dollars. In the 2008 Beijiang Olympic, nephrite jade that were mined in Qinghai (other side of Kunlun mountain) were being used to make some of the Olympic medals. Some left over material, some white, some yellowish white and some dark green nephrite jades were flooded the market for a short while and you could find some crude jade carvings made of this pretty good nephrite material. Some were listed for very high prices and some very reasonable. They are very decent nephrite.

For you to make a statement such as "You must have a very sharp eye since you can tell from a picture this is serpentine. Wow!"
reflects either your naive belief in that you can find something for nothing, like my Chinese friend who truly believe he has a Neolithic/Archaic jade collection he accumulated from eBay that is worth half a million US dollars and even published a book with them for sales on Amazon.
or that you mostly obtain your knowledge in jade from internet and never attempt to go a bit deeper to learn about what you love.

At one time, after being repeatedly ripped off by dishonest dealers who sold jade fakes, I had spent a lot of money and time in accumulating jade books (which are collectibles in their own sakes), spending hundreds of dollars on buying equipments for testing and studying jade carvings, jade rocks, jade slabs obtained from all over the world, and only after studying and testing more than 1,000 pieces of them, I started to develop some confidence in identifying the bad ones from the good ones. Of course, I can tell these beads were made of cheap serpentine. I had seen, tested and studied quite a few of them. Have you?

But with only low resolution pictures, your requests for others to appraise some of the pieces posted by you in this forum is truly a joke. No real jade experts will try to appraise any jade carvings free and with low resolution pictures only. Therefore, you always get what you are paying for, in this case, since our opinions are free, nothing.

Of course you definitely are entitled to your own opinions, but opinions based on information that were freely obtained from the internet or from jade pieces that were listed on eBay, should only be taken with a grain of salt. If you truly respect your hobby, then you should show respect to others and should not use 4-letter word in your title (like in here) or made sarcastic remarks, otherwise you will continue to pay far more tuition before you will finally learn the hard truth - that your whole jade collection is nothing but a heap of expensive junks, like some of those that were posted in this forum by you or by others. Now I am sorry if I may have hurt your feelings and you will probably challenge me to post some of my collections here. But that will be indeed the most naive and childish behavior any jade lovers will have when they could not agree with others.

One of the famous jade experts in the States, Mr. Sam Bernstein, once said in this forum:

"There is an old saying among jade collectors that if you ask 6 experts for an opinion, you'll get 12 opinions! Expertise is derived from direct personal experience over a prolonged period of time. Expertise in one field does not by itself guarantee expertise in another discipline. Gaining expertise requires hard work, study, reflection and confidence in one's ability and the integrity to admit there is always something new to be learned. Keeping an open, flexible mind and applying knowledge to a real world situation are important. Knowledge once painfully gained cannot be taken away from you.

Thank-you,
Sam Bernstein
S. Bernstein & Co. San Francisco"

That is indeed well said and should serve as a reminder for us jade lovers.

Super


** In an act of filial piety to ensure that he would not reign longer than his grandfather Kangxi, the Qianlong emperor retired on 8 February 1796—the last day of that year in the Chinese calendar—and took the title Emperor Emeritus.[48] However, he remained the ultimate authority until his death in 1799.


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