CHINA, ancient bronze belthook with silver inlay

DescriptionClothing in general was and is a mark of status. High class men wore fancy belts held together with these big belthooks. Kind of like Western American belt buckles in terms of showing off.When bronze first appeared it was a precious metal, but as time went on there got to be more and more around. It started accumulating in jewelry collections, then there was so much of it that people made coins to spend on more important things.China is like the world: it has everything in it. The current evidence shows that there were people “everywhere” by about 12,000 years ago. In China they started writing stuff down about 5000 years ago, roughly the same time as Egypt and Sumer. But the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations are gone, but China is still here.Over the decades I’ve been selling collectibles my market has been about 97% coins, 2% paper money, 1% everything else.