Hi David,
That is a good-looking Yomud. I used to use that very strategy in rug hunting: looking in semi-likely venues in which the proprietors were not necessarily rug specialists but were in a pretty good position to acquire rugs for resale. There would be plenty of duds in that quest, but that only made the occasional find like your main carpet all the sweeter.
The palette looks great. The secondary colors make it, such as the blue/green and the apricot. Looking at your last image, I am comparing the back view of colors to the front. For example, the yellowish-apricot on the inner hooks of the guls; I take it that the color at the upper right corner of that image is the same as the color in two of the guls at the lower left. How does that look at the knot-collar level? (Don't trouble about photographing it!)
I don't know what to say about age. In general, I don't view the whole subject of giving birth dates to collectible rugs...say, greater nineteenth century...with a lot of confidence. I would say that whatever the age of your rug is, it seems to have resisted the progressive degradation of Turkoman rugs pretty well.
One question: There is a crease across the approximate middle of the first image (towards the near end of the rug). Is that the result of folding, or does it appear to be structurally-based?
Congratulations on an excellent find!
Rich
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