One of our fellow treasure hunter in this community has sent us an interesting photo of an “antique Chinese snuff jar”. It has a white color with very beautiful artistic cultural design.
On its front portion, it has a dragon serpent design while at its back is an old Chinese text. So the question asked by our fellow treasure hunter is that he wanted to know my opinion about this antique bottle.
Unfortunately, he did not provide any details about how he acquired this item. So he may either have uncovered it as a treasure hunter or it was passed down to him.
The only details he gave is that this is a “snuff jar”.
In this photo, we can see the front side of this antique bottle. Based on my analysis, I can say that this is indeed a snuff jar that was originally owned by the Chinese.
Such bottles often contain traditional medicines.
Snuff jars are intentionally designed to be very artistic. This is the reason why this bottle that we have here has a dragon serpent design.
In case you do not know, the dragon serpent is the main symbol of China.
In this second photo, this is the opposite side of the bottle where we can see some Chinese writings. These writings have something to do with the original contents of this antique snuff jar.
Probably, it refers to the type of medicine it originally contained.
Antique snuff jars owned by the Chinese could have a very high amount of price today. But not all antique snuff jars could have such a price because there are several criterias that need to be met.
One of the most important criteria is the age of the item. So the older the snuff jar, the higher the price can be expected.
Two is the original owner of the snuff jar. If the original owner of the bottle was a famous or powerful person in the past then surely, the item is deemed to have a very valuable price.
Currently, the highest snuff jar is valued at a price of 25.3 million Hong Kong dollars. This is equivalent to 1.6 Billion in Philippine Peso.
And this snuff jar was an “18th-century Imperial Enamel-Painted Bottle” which has been used by the “Qing Imperial Family”.
Therefore
Antique Chinese snuff jars can be very valuable today. However, there are several criterias in order to identify their current value such as the age, the original owner, and etc…
So when it comes to this snuff jar owned by our fellow treasure hunter, if it belonged to the ancient period of China and it was originally owned by a powerful person in the past then surely we can say that this object is very valuable today.