Ancient artifacts found at an estate sale?!? once in a lifetime finds! HD 1080p

hi i'm alex archbull and i've been buying and selling antiques since i was 9 years old from basements to scrap yards i'll look just about anywhere i can to find lost antiques and collectibles and sometimes i'll go big and buy everything with my wife and kids we run an antique shop in edmonton alberta canada filled with some of the most unique items we can find i never know what's going to happen or who i'm going to meet this is our life this is our adventure and this is curiosity [Music] do welcome back to today's episode everyone it is a cold icy cold day it's minus 28 degrees celsius which is crazy we had such a big swing it dropped 24 degrees celsius in the last day here but that doesn't stop us from getting out and on the road to look for treasures today's a special day i got a lead that there was somebody with some really interesting pieces for sale um we are gonna go out do i say we it's because the person holding the camera right now is my son steven uh he's with us and uh we're doing a father-son road trip right now and we're gonna go out and try and find the coolest stuff we can get today and my goal for 2021 which is when i'm filming this video was to start off this year by finding the most interesting things i could for our shop and that's gonna start today [Music] [Applause] [Music] stephen and i have gotten home he's already waiting over at the table we're gonna start laying things out uh i've got my paperwork which we're gonna go through later in the video uh and the boxes behind me which i'm gonna start laying out so uh you ready to dig through these boxes finally yes i am okay he's been excited about this for days so let's start unpacking and see what we got hey steven has the first box take it over the table and let's uh very we have to be more careful than we've been about anything with this stuff um actually i'm going to get a cloth for the table too i'll be right back all right okay the next box is marked mask chinese money etc so a little variety of stuff in here now both of us have washed our hands the reason why we're not using gloves in fact if you uh some museums will use the white cotton gloves when handling this sort of stuff but there's an added risk of it dropping out of your hands and breaking um so for what we're doing today no gloves because we don't want to drop and break or damage anything but if you were in a proper setting yeah you might look at different ways to handle it i'm just going to lift the tape up on this if you have scissors but i think what we'll do is we'll just lift the tape all right and see what's inside this box okay oh that is a big asian it looks like a massive asian bronze coin it looks like there's some paperwork in here okay i'm going to lay these out um these could be trade currency sometimes they're fertility tokens we had one with a boy that was on top that was a fertility token let's get this bag unpacked and see what's inside look at these laid out so far a few really interesting pieces um this is very early form of currency um chinese currency from i think it's about 100 a.d or around there the the obverse is blank with uh and there's some uh china where um early coins and tokens uh including these gold colored ones too i'll have to do a little bit of research on that this is kind of neat so it says found in province of manabi in western ecuador this would be a sacrificial knife so you know when you hear about human sacrifices and things that is a sacrificial or possibly even like a surgical knife that they would use at that time and that has some serious age that's from around 100 to 700 a.d and it's a coffer that was uh likely mined from around peru really really interesting piece to uh to have come out of her collection um here we have what looks like a knife but it's actually currency this would be oh boy i want to say eastern south dynasty um it's a you know from about 700 bc to 256 a.d they use things like this um ridge handle slanted blade you know that you could stack and store these sorts of things on a rope and you'd use that as currency you know fair size too that would have been a good piece of currency and the one thing and you you know this too stephen is that they didn't actually use coins as currency all the time you have you have a roman coin or don't you that's not even a coin it's um it's not roman it's like persian coin oh yeah it's like an arrowhead yeah so i mean we we look at what we use for currency now but they hadn't figured out you know to use coins and a lot of times these holes that you see in early chinese or asian coins or so you could string them together and carry them so there's you know larger currency everything is sort of meant to be strong so you could carry it easily around of course that changed later on so boy some really neat stuff coming out right off the hop here this is pretty cool stuff so far and we're only even into the the first little bag here that this also looks like other currency really forms um manila possibly okay we're gonna get these out of the bag and we'll have a look at it here too yeah that's exactly what this is it's um a manila which is actually um i think it's portuguese or spanish for bracelet these were used in west africa and sadly were used as currency as part of the slave trade finding an early slave trade piece like that is an unfortunate part of history that happened of course many many moons ago and there are remnants like that that are still around and with us some of these other pieces are also trade beads and tokens probably from around the same era or so um boy okay well let's uh let's continue digging and see what else we find in the box tooth necklace and open these guys up and see what's inside this is going to be a cool one this is quite heavy this is a mask stone carved mask possibly olmec or mayan around that time so let's see if we can get out of the bag here it's exactly what i thought it's a early carved um it looks olmec to me i mean an actual expert would know better than i but and we'll check some of the paperwork we have on it just to verify but um this could be you know what they would use this for stephen what would they use it for that any guesses why you would carve a mask this size and it's about the size of an actual human head potentially a burial mask yeah this might be a funerary mask and what they would do is they'd place this on the on the body boy melissa's gonna be really happy that i put a sheet down on the table now um but they would put this on the um body of the deceased with some you know um uh bits that were important to them sometimes necklaces or ear hoops and things like that um really really nice condition and you can see all the little carve marks on here so nice piece it's probably maybe oh i don't know 10 inches across and eight or nine inches tall and it is hollowed out carved out on the back a little bit too um this wouldn't have been the reason why this would have been more of a funerary mask is because the person's uh carved with their eyes closed if you have eyes that are open in a mouth that's open and holes for mounting that would be one that you might wear for a ceremony this type of piece would just be placed on a person or or potentially decorative but really cool um we have a couple other boxes here so do you want to open up i don't think that that's full of edo japan um but let's see what's inside i might have to get some scissors so you've got some scissors over next to you yes i do yeah just be very careful the the one piece i could see on the top it's metal it looks like a hat badge like an old military piece but hard to say when you buy boxes that are packed up by a former museum you never know what they're gonna have inside okay let's flip that over king william iii 1690 now that wouldn't likely be from 1690. sometimes you see a date and you get all excited and think that might be from its when it's from but it's just not built to that era what this likely is is a world war one era cap badge um in king william the third that was uh king william's own it was probably like a brigade uh world war one uh branch of the military so they would have had that on their cap and uh there's attachment points there it's actually quite large it might be a little bit bigger than your typical cap badge but um good condition and there are lots of military collectors a little bit newer than some of the other things we're finding here uh we'll set that over here but what do you have in the rest of it well first of all we have some kleenex just in case you have to wipe your nose okay so that that box was marked uh tooth necklace correct well i think they're right about that okay let's bring it over animal tooth necklace and what does it say on i'm gonna bring this a little bit closer purchase from honolulu 1971 so that could be yeah hawaiian made from i mean who knows how old it is i mean if it's from 1971 when it was purchased you'd hope that most of these items were purchased as an antique yeah but i'm not overly familiar with that with what those teeth are from but uh wouldn't want to had any of those sink into me it is very long you know for the woman who has it all and wants to have something different or man or whoever you have an animal tooth necklace you know it's an interesting arrangement in the way that they've actually hand-tied and knotted and strung it all together here i would say this is quite a bit older of course than the 1971 they have on it hopefully there's some paperwork on it but that looks like it's a very early hawaiian piece okay we'll set we'll leave that in its little box and we'll set it aside um let's open up this box oh arrowheads that's what i think that's what this says this box yeah that's what it is it's a box full of arrowheads um all different sizes and manner um you know the fact these came from uh museum collection is pretty cool sometimes farmers are digging in their field and one of these will pop up or down by the river and where people would have hunted so you can find these things in the ground on occasion some of these are marked ark which is usually arkansas so i wonder if these are let's see what does this say on it clay co arc you know what's interesting about this is that um back in the 50s and 60s when they found stuff like this people knew it was an artifact but they just wrote right on the artifact itself you know it's not something you do nowadays it would be gently tagged or put in its own little holder um you know different times different times for sure but a nice little box full of arrowheads yeah we've gone back to the necklace and after doing a little bit of research we've discovered what steven these are dog teeth yeah they're a canine tooth necklace which was um i guess something they did in hawaii but it's you see a lot of them from new guinea from the 1800s or so so this is an antique indigenous um canine tooth necklace and when steve was looking at he said they look like dog teeth and he was absolutely right so a good call kiddo we'll put it back in the box but at least now we know what that is on to we've only gotten through the first layer of this box oh this looks like it's gonna be something special there's a pillow okay another big mask this one's really big yeah let's bring this out i'm just gonna see if there's anything underneath you wouldn't want to wear this it's really heavy beautifully carved open eyes you can see there's holes in the back and in the sides are there holes in the back they i may have actually worn this one boy that'd be a heavy thing to wear you'd have extra strong neck muscles but yeah steven's right see i was talking about i was saying that this doesn't have the holes in it so it's not something that you probably would have worn and the eyes are closed this one eyes are open mouth is open it's very alert and you've got the holes to possibly attach it on your head so this might have actually been a ceremonial piece um usually though you would have the the eyes hollowed out so you can actually see what the heck you're doing but um it is interesting that it was either probably mounted or strapped on to something it might not have been maybe if not worn it could have been mounted somewhere again carved stone really nice detail i like look how how swirly it looks when you get into the carving on it just you think about the guy or the person who made this all those years ago that you know to see into the future and think that here it is um with us you know and that's probably over two thousand three thousand years old potentially it's lasted in that good condition i think that was it from the bottom of this box right yeah okay well that no kidding it was marked fragile okay uh let's move on to box number two steven is moving box number two over and i think what we're gonna do today is after we're done opening these boxes we'll set these up and take proper photos of them i brought my light box home and we'll post those on our instagram page okay we got some bottles yeah these are these are a little bit newer that's a 1940s hudson's bay whiskey bottle mind you hudson's bay is one of the oldest retailers since 1670. i used to be a manager at their store years ago and unfortunately they're closing down this year so kind of sad but an interesting part of canadian history i think there's another bottle in here too there it is yeah another hudson's bay bottle okay those are a little new but uh still kind of interesting what do you have there looks like a it looks like a pitchfork it kind of does but look at the way the ends are hooked on it okay let's have a look at that i'm assuming that would be mounted on or not mounted but it would be on the end of this okay well yeah you would think so that would definitely uh those are the barbs to hook into something yeah well okay well let's let's see if there's any uh what else is in here we'll get everything out and then we'll have a look through and see ah these these little tiny pieces that are wrapped up now these were recently wrapped up for us for transport by the previous owners so obviously the in the 1960s they weren't using ziploc bags but uh i'm gonna open this bag up and see what's inside and what was in the bag beer flares you know when people get the ear extensions and it makes your earlobe all widened out yes i do that's what this is really early ear flares that would have you know gone on a side there should be another one in there too i would think that hopefully there's a matching set let's let's dig and get everything out of the box and see what else is going on in here there are some early just like blacksmith tools too pinchers and clips and things of that nature that are not super old but steven found a very handy tag attached because we found another one of these what looks like a little spear and what is it it is a spear it's a fishing sphere and does it have a year on it that they say it might be from it says nope just says antique fishing spear who found where was it near saskatchewan saskatoon so i mean or it could be early fur trade era this is uh early blacksmith piece and you can see where they worked it they both are that's pretty cool let's have a look-see this one is uh this is probably a little newer yeah painted see the weld it's hollowed yeah but so those are the early fishing spears neat and we found a bag full of old weights for a scale and what's in the box more stuff i'm going through all this stuff unfortunately my son steven um had some schoolwork he had to get to so he's left for a little bit here my wife melissa is home and she's kind of witnessing me go through a whole bunch of stuff i haven't even showed her what we've got yet but let me show you guys what came in that last little box i emptied it out and then the two masks that were in the other box there was all these original uh necklaces some are made from coral and at some point they were restrung obviously but they found the appropriate type of stones that would have been together i'm sure it probably took some conservator somebody quite a bit of time to put these back together um so yeah decorative necklaces hints of jade and other sorts of stone um coral really easy to spot because it's all bumpy uh another little mask he's got quite the beak on him um it is the nose and the mouth and this was likely worn as a pendant based on the fact it's got that little hole drilled in there and you can see um it's an early type of drill mark because it's um conical like it's cone-shaped as it goes in and they would they would have had like a sharpened stone and spun it to to get that hole and then they would have flipped it over and down the other side and so it meets it's sort of uh the middle the smaller part of the stone so really interesting to see how that was done um this is kind of cool it says found near cusco peru hopefully i said that right um this is a throwing star it's a stone throwing star i wouldn't want to have that chucked at me i mean this was probably for uh hunting but you might have been something they used in battle as well you grasp it in your hand fits in there nice and smooth so it'll come flying out of your hand in a big hurry and uh yeah that would uh knock out or um encompass it incapacitate whoever you're after or whatever you're after all sorts of cool stuff anything i wasn't really sure about was this it looks almost like a more slightly more modern uh clay pipe almost or part of a a clay pipe so i'll have to research that one to see what that is but more ear extensions as well we got uh i think a couple little matching sets though some really neat things i'm going to keep digging after doing a little bit more research online i think i found the proper culture that the majority of those large masks are from they seem to be a perfect match for the tewa tavikan masks that i see online at various museums for around 250 to 600 ce and it is a mottled green uh guerrero jade i don't know if i said that quite right but um it is a form of jade i believe that mine are as well but they're just not as polished as this but the way the eyes are formed um pre-columbian and this says naturalistic large eyes awkwardly knows an open mouth as if as if in frozen in speech this mass face displays the remarkable ability of teotihuacan artist to fashion stone using techniques developed and refined over centuries created from mottled green guerrero jade boy if i said that wrong i apologize which was long associated with fertility and the cycle of life and death it was sacred and revered uh probably not worn during rituals rather appears it would have covered the face of an elite individual in death yeah that's my thought and then of course it had the uh string holes drilled through the sides so you could attach it right to the person so yeah these are likely a funerary or death mask wow i have been going through boxes now for the last 20 or 30 minutes or so and i've just about got everything laid out on the table um so i'm going to do a walk around with you and show you just the amazing amount of stuff that came out of these boxes this is the haul from today and not my average stuff not you know normally i'm buying things like old you know hot wheels toys or collectibles or military stuff this is a whole other manner of collecting now some of these were labeled um these like this little frog it says from central or eastern usa mississippian period 1500 a.d little frog isn't that cute and all these early central or southern american artifacts mayan um we've got some peruvian pieces little stone figures wood carved masks i mean this is way outside of my normal wheelhouse but it's so nice to get some things that will also teach me a bit about history now i don't know if this is a um like a mayan kind of era smudge pot or what that would have been used for really really um nice detail with the big sort of snarling teeth there's a lizard of some sort almost um you know it's just uh not the average sort of thing that you come across i found this it looks almost like a little pipe of sorts um or a spoon or i mean but it's broken sadly but the pieces are both there that's probably a more recent break that didn't happen in my ownership that was separated in two different lots we found both pieces that match up there were some lots that came from um our indigenous cultures up north so this would be an inuit piece very very early carved out of probably whale bone or um bone of sorts and it's got the little person just grasping a little child grasping onto the back and i think i'd have that face too if i had someone grab it on to me and what's interesting about this is that a lot of times you see um northern indigenous statues and they're quite large but when you see a small one like this you know that it was likely intended to be carried as a nomadic person would you would have something small like this you could keep with you very easy and pack it around and this might be like a little child's toy you wouldn't have a big heavy stone sculpture to carry with you if you're moving around and following your next meal so when you see the small pieces like this um they're most often authentic and these would probably be you know potentially 1700 1800s quite early there's a little seal there and it has um what almost looks like a piece of quartz inlaid into the bottom to act as maybe a bit of a weight so maybe this would float on the water there were some more modern items too like these blacksmith forged axes which are almost like um uh hudson bay trade era sort of axes you know 1700s kind of pieces or 1800s you can see all the hammer marks on them uh and then there's some pieces from around the world um like this uh antique this is a philippine bracelet made of a wild boar tusk so as we go through there's just things from all around the world and you know mayan stamps and seals um and again another box full of alaskan and indigenous art and you see what they've done again they they wrote where they got it from right on the artifact itself again that's something you see with pieces that were in museums from a long time ago carved little figures to me that this is very nice to see because these would all be nice early authentic um locally made um pieces from up north they were not tourist pieces they were made to be used by the peoples that actually carved this that was for them and they've since been traded for or traded to there's a 74 hawaiian scissors such an odd mix of things from all over the place i found this little clay mask in there too and you might be asking yourself well how do you know if this is authentic or or not i mean anybody could just write a tag saying anything um the nice thing is uh when i bought this collection i got all the paperwork on it from 1950s 60s and 70s from when it was purchased from major museums and auction houses and collections so it's all legit and it's all verified with certificates and the whole works big fat envelope here that's the biggest and most important thing to have with something like this is the documentation most of these artifacts go back um you know within the last thousand years or so some are some are potentially a fair bit older but we have also you know probably from the 1800s or so these early woven baskets that are salish or west coast indigenous with these beautiful little woven details on them and again northern inuit figures little tools and scrapers that are made of bone you know that might be for scraping or you know removing flesh or even you know you can almost use that for just about anything but it's just nice how it's got that you can feel that it's been used it's all smoothed out and really really um uh you can feel that the hands have been on there as well grooved from years ancient spoons let's see this says bought at barter island off coast of alaska it's like a um a husk or a a scoop probably like a water scoop of sorts that would have been used somebody would have just chiseled that out and used it i mean it has a natural handle on it anyway but yeah a really really interesting collection so where did this stuff all come from the man that in this book they call mr witasquin a prolific collector and uh a gentleman that owned his own private museum stan reynolds in the state of stan reynolds now um he traveled the world he was a world war ii fighter pilot very interesting guy actually he was a world war ii uh fighter pilot came back opened up a car dealership and ended up opening a whole bunch of car dealerships um bought machinery um they would take nearly anything on trade like you could trade in like your stove towards a car or whatever but he ended up amassing his big collection and uh he built a museum in the 60s called the pioneer museum and as he was putting together the museum um he would go off and he'd collect artifacts and of course as a as a private owner of a museum you could go off and you could see even in the 70s he was buying things um you know from archaeologists and people who are you know looking at aztec sites and stuff and not surprisingly at that time um before many rules were set in place you could just go about and buy all these things as you wish now it's a little more difficult you have to have proper paperwork and it has to have been um you know an earlier piece but this is all um stuff that came from the pioneer museum that has now uh uh been converted and turned into an automotive museum and owned by the government but all this was a private collection and all purchased over the many years in the 1950s and 60s and i was looking at some of the prices like in the 1950s i was looking at one of the receipts there they're paying like 1500 for items you know 50 60 years ago but i can only imagine like that would have been a brand new car in 1960 pretty well um but there he was out and buying um stone mass um olmac or ole miss it's just astounding the amount of stuff that's put together and what's even more astounding is that i was able to uh acquire this privately and now we have this wonderful collection of artifacts that we'll try and find a very good home for and uh so people can view and uh and look and take in all of its uh its glory once more but um super cool collection i mean i cool isn't the right word for it i don't overuse that i it's just um surreal to have a chance an opportunity to own all this history thanks for watching today's episode guys uh it was nice to spend time with my son and going on this adventure and find this stuff we will be trying to do some research and figure out more about it in days to come if you're curious to see what we found and how it photographed we're gonna be putting pictures of it up on our instagram page at curiosity inc yg or our facebook page under curiosity inc as well we'll try and do some nice photos so you can see what this really looks like but uh today wow it's a real special day but thanks for watching guys i mean you just never know what you're gonna find in the middle of the prairies um it could be you know an old car or it could be ancient artifacts so uh tune in for more episodes don't forget to hit that subscribe button and we'll see you all soon bye for now [Music]

Channel: Curiosity Incorporated

Views: 101,792

Rating: 4.9435425 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: jIMKuD7Mc5E

Length: 31min 27sec (1887 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SwedishCopper]

I have been subscribed to this antiques dealers channel for a while now, it’s pretty fun and he seems like a nice guy. But in his most recent video he bouight a collection of alleged antiquites that look a bit suspicious to me. He says the items have complete documentation going back to the 1950/60s, but those types of things are commonly forged in my experience. Any thoughts?

[u/themistoclesia2]

I watch Curiosity Inc., too, and wondered the same thing. He mentioned that the items were purchased by a well-known bazillionaire [my word] directly from museums, and his own purchase was directly from that guy’s estate, so maybe the fact that most of the antiquities hadn’t changed hands since the mid-20th century allowed Alex to confirm legitimacy? I don’t know, but I did wonder as well. He’s such a nice guy with such a great family, and is generally knowledgeable, so I’m hoping it’s all legit. This is a little out of his normal bailiwick, though, and he admitted as much.