Antique Coin Silver Fiddle Spoons

[KevinM]

This is a pair of antique coin silver fiddle spoons I recently purchased at the TS. I often look for these old fiddle spoons, forks, etc... in the flatware bins and I find them fairly often, at least often enough to look for them now and then.

Anyways, they measure about 6" in length and weigh around 24 +/- grams each. On the back of the spoons they are stamped "A.L. ZINDEL" with no other maker marks.

I'm guessing the spoons may be American made from the early to mid 1800's and made from coin silver. I've searched high and low for who A.L. Zinder is but can't find anything on the name.

Does anyone know who A.L. Zinder is, where they are from and what time period they may have been a silversmith?

Thanks!
Kevin

[KC]

Could be the pictures, but my initial reaction is that these appear to be stainless steel.  Did you test silver?

Unfortunately, in my neck of the woods you can find fiddle handles often.  BUT, to find the coin silver and original French ones is few and far between.

Can't find any reference to A L ZINDEL for silver or stainless or even a store or importer.  (Many times stores imprinted their names on handles as well as importers.)

Still looking.

Name has origins form Switzerland and Germany

[KevinM]

They were tarnished when I purchased them, I polished them up. Unfortunately my silver test acid has gone bad from age and is a dark red color. The 14k acid shows somewhat of a gray color but it was hard to tell for sure using that. If it was sterling the 18k acid would have shown blue but it didn't. I may have upped the gamma on the camera by .5 for the pictures but I don't remember if these were the pictures. If they were stainless steel I don't believe any of the acid test would have change color or had any reactions to the metal.