Here are few more photo's

They appear to be 60's era Zildjians from what I can tell. Possibly some hand hammering if very early. You can check Ebay completed auctions to get a pretty good idea on the market. I'd say 175 would be the bottom of the market on a pair of nice 15's, which these certainly appear to be.

Mike

Thank you for your answer Mlayton. They have a very thin lathing, which is different to my zildjian 60's crash. And possibly slightly different hammering .The 60's crash has a larger lathing.

My suspision is that they are from mid 50's to early 60's zildjian though I could be totally wrong.

Would be great to hear other opinions from vintage cymbals enthusiasts !

Dial in s stamp

I Don't see any S tamp markings on any of my 2 cymbals.

I'd say 1960s and here's why.

1960s looking stamp: http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-gallery.html#60s

It would help to know if the stamp height is 1 3/16" or closer to 1.25" or closer to 1.5". Just for my research.

I see no visible hand hammering in the pictures you provided. I see the expected 1960s pattern of machine concentric ring hammering. What to look for: http://black.net.nz/avedis/hammering.html#h-60s

Lathing is within the style expected for 60s: http://black.net.nz/avedis/bells.html

This link has a focus on bell lathing, which changes over different production eras but not in a strongly diagnostic way. I haven't written the full page on lathing on the bow yet.

Estimated market value: based on n=35 sales of 15" hi hats in my database the expected value is around $170 with a range from $110 to $244. That doesn't take the nice condition of yours into account, so I'd agree with Mike that you would be likely to get in the upper half of the expected range. In other words more than $175 is likely.

I'm still in the middle of doing 16" cymbals and have to finish that before I move down to 15". I'll add a more complete statistical analysis when I get to it. link: http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-prices.html

I'm not sure what jaghog meant to say in his post. There is an "S" stamp used for seconds in some Avedis eras. The S of the second stamp seems to be the same font as the one used for military issue.

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/english-3.png[/img]

If you post images of your 60s crash (close up of stamp, top picture and bottom picture) I can compare that to your hats.

Here are more detailed photo's of the hi-hat's

Here is more photo's.

Thank you so much for the information Zenstat ! It is very very helpful !

Are my hi-hat's considered to be collectable ?

Would be great if you can study the photo's of my hihat's

I have checked the photo's on the website you have provided and compared them to my photo's.

It seems that they might be from late 50's ! ? The question is do they look like hand hammered ?

Thanks for all the extra photos. Yes now that I've seen the additional photos I'm seeing

bands of lathing of different widths (more 50s than 60s)

bell lathing variable (more 50s than 60s)

bottom hammering fits with later 1950s or early 60s

top hammering fits with later 1950s or early 60s

These aren't particularly "collectible" if by "collectible" you mean a significant price premium above their value as nice cymbals for playing music. There might be a slight price premium for cymbals with 1950s stamps and production clues over early 1960s cymbals, but I'm not really picking that in my analysis so far. So far only Trans Stamps and 18" Pre Trans Stamps are showing a significant "collectible" price premium. But it's early days in terms of my sample sizes and my analysis.