The popularity of this type chandelier waxes and wanes as people's tastes change. A variation of this chandelier was a common item in many houses back East. I can't say what it might be worth to you or someone else, or what the wisdom might be to shipping. Look up Colonial Chandeliers on the internet for anything similar; do a bit of research. Never really considered fixed lighting as an asset unless of heirloom quality - more generally as something that conveys in the sale of a house. But, the value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it.

The end of the arm looks as though it was sawn off and a small filler soldered in the end. The lamp holder also seems to be soldered to the arm in an odd way, and I can see two modern screws attaching the arm to the ring holding the bowl. These three things don't look like 19th century craftsmen to me. I wish I could see a pic from above looking down into the bowl. I suspect the elbows where the horizontal and vertical rods connect are done in a similiar fashion, as well as the lamp lighting the bowl. There are a lot of other things that don't add up with this fixture. Yes, there were gas and oil chandeliers that hung from pulleys and used counterweights so that they could be pulled down for lighting, cleaning, etc. Pull-down gas lights had a special gas fitting called a "water slide" which allowed the supply tube to be extended when the fixture was pulled down. If that were the case with this one, there are a whole lot of missing parts. But what I see as a more obvious problem is that there are not enough pulleys, no weights, no water slide (or gas supply for that matter) and there is no handle, ring, knob or finial for one to grab to pull it down. The bowl, if it is original, would make a terrible handle. All of the pull-down chandeliers I have seen have had something to pull it down with. If it were indeed an original gas fixture, the gas would need a path to follow from the ceiling to the burners at the ends of the arms, and to some sort of burner in the center to illuminate the bowl. There are no valves or fittings that I can see, the three individual tubes do not seem to be joined at any common supply union, and the pulleys screwed in the top ends of each of the three arms would make it impossible to connect them to gas. So if it wasn't a gas chandelier, maybe it was oil lamps held at the end of each arm, raised and lowered by pulleys and weights. Could be, but again, the bowl doesn't make sense because, it could not be illuminated by an oil lamp, and it doesn't provide a handhold to grasp in order to lower it for lighting/refilling. The final thing is the rosette doesn't fit with an oil light. It most definetly looks like an 1860's gasolier ceiling rosette. It has the pierced design to provide ventilation of the combustion fumes, and it also has a center hole for the gas supply tube. The three downrods seem to go through the holes in the rosette, but I can't see from the pictures if those holes look like they were part of the original casting or drilled later. Also, there's the fact that there are no gas fittings and the pulleys prevent connecting a gas supply. I might believe that someone has created your chandelier using parts of various other fixtures he had on hand, but the trouble with that idea is it doesn't make sense either. Why would someone with the skill to join all these pieces together go to the trouble of using pulleys to put it together at the top, when it would have been so much easier to use washers and nuts to attach the tops of the three rods directly through the holes in the rosette and then hang the whole thing from a threaded down rod through the center of the rosette? Wish I had a better answer for you, but it is a mystery to me. But the only thing that really matters is that it looks really cool and you like it.

Oh my gosh!! That is wonderful!! Thank you so much for your help. I've been looking for a week now and could not find anything. :)

Olychic, You found it for me! Thank you so much. I love the look of this, but a quick look at the website tells me that I am NOT in love with the high price. Yikes!