John Benjamin began his career as a 17-year-old assistant working at Cameo Corner, the Bloomsbury antique jewellery shop founded by Moshe Oved in 1914. “In those far-off days of the early 1970s goods were abundant and prices infinitely affordable. Museum Street was the ideal location for a keen young man to learn all about the antique jewellery business and I absorbed it like a sponge.”
After gaining his FGA and DGA qualifications he joined Phillips as a junior cataloguer in the jewellery department. “We took in enough goods to hold a 200-lot sale every fortnight. It was incredibly hard work but we regularly punched above our weight, often consigning star lots which would fetch an absolute fortune today.