I get many questions regarding sterling silverware and silver in general. Most of the questions I get concern tea sets, flatware, grooming items etc. In the past I would book many appointments when people would either call or fill out our contact form stating that they had an old set of ‘sterling’ silverware that they’d like to sell, unfortunately the bulk of these sets turned out to be silver plated and not something I would purchase.
I buy sterling silver in any form be it flatware, jewelry, old mirrors etc. The problem is that with the recent spike in the silver spot price and all the companies advertising to buy your old gold jewelry, silver jewelry, coins etc many people believe they are sitting on a nice chunk of change with their mother’s old ‘silverware’. Most of these people believe that since it’s in a silverware chest and have assumed that it is real sterlingware worth some money. The problem is most of these flatware sets are silver plated and worth next to nothing as far and precious metals go.
In the last year I’ve taken to screening these prospective clients more carefully thus not wasting their time or mine. I’m very specific in having them verify that their items have one of the following markings/hallmarks before I agree to price their set:
925, Ster, Sterling, Sterling Silver or Stg. As you are likely aware sterling silver contains 92.5% actual silver, the remaining 7.5% can be made up of copper, nickel or other metals.
If they don’t have one of the hallmarks listed above 99.5% of the time it is not an item that has any monetary value to me and is usually silver plated and not something I would buy. I have purchased silverware sets both small and large and have paid as much as $1,750.00 for one set and as little as $200.00 for others. The price your set will fetch depends on it’s weight in grams, you must also take into account that knives, candlesticks, hand mirrors, large brushes and other larger items are usually ‘loaded’ which means they are partially filled with another substance other than sterling silver. An example of this are knives, the only portion of the knife in a sterling silverware set that is actually sterling silver is the outer sleeve of the handle, the blade will be stainless steel and the inside of the handle will be stainless steel or sometime a concrete type mixture in older sets.
Below I’ve listed some photos to illustrate my points further so you can see what is really inside different items:
Loaded Sterling Silver Knives:
As mentioned above sterling silver knives are loaded with different materials, in the images below you can get a good idea on the amount of silver to filler ratio. As you can see we’ve cut off the stainless steel blade revealing a concrete type mixture inside with only the outside skin of the handle being actual sterling silver. On this particular knife, the knife intact weighed in at 67 grams, after we cut off the blade the weight was 39.7 grams and after we removed the inside loading mixture the actual weight of the sterling silver was 16.7 grams. When I price knives I actually pay 25% of the total weight of the knife to allow for variations which do occur.
Sterling Silver Knife Inside
This picture is of the exact same knife, you will see we have an intact knife on the left, in the middle we have cut off the stainless steel blade, and on the right you see that the sterling silver is the outer part of the handle , inside it is filled with a concrete type mixture.
sterling silver knives revealed
Sterling Silver Candlesticks
Candlesticks are another thing to be mindful of if you are purchasing them for scrap value, in the picture below you will see a sterling silver candlestick we’ve dismantled, beforehand it weighed in at 525 grams, after the loaded material was removed the weight of the sterling silver was 233 grams. As you can see again we have a grey concrete type filler inside the candlestick which makes up more than half of it’s total weight.
Sterling Silver Candlestick
Sterling Silver Mirrors
Sterling silver mirrors are something else you will run into, the picture below was taken after the actual glass/mirror was removed, the weight of the original items intact was 575 grams, after we removed the glass/mirror the actual weight of the sterling silver was129 grams.
Sterling Silver Mirror
If you have more questions about sterling silver, jewelry, coins or silverware etc visit our Silver FAQ page devoted to just that.
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