Are you sitting on a treasure of old, mismatched or damaged silverware pieces?
Even though nowadays high-grade steel cutlery has replaced the silverware of old for good reasons many might still have a treasure hidden in their basement or attic without even knowing. The value of silverware has increased greatly due to its precious metals content. We offer you top prices for your old silver. Give us a call at (705) 302 1055 or check out our payout estimator.
Is sterling silver the same as pure silver?
Sterling silver is an alloy of silver containing 92.5% by weight of silver and 7.5% by weight of other metals, usually copper. The sterling silver standard has a minimum fineness of 925. Since fine silver or pure silver is relatively soft, it is usually alloyed with copper to increase its hardness and strength. Sterling silver is prone to tarnishing and staining, but fortunately that doesn’t reduce the payout for the contained silver.
There is also the so called “Britannia silver standard”. It is an alloy similar to sterling silver but contains a little more silver. The Britannia standard has a minimum fineness of 958 (95.84% silver). We don’t care how scratched, bent or banged up your silverware is, we buy everything that contains precious metals, except for plated items.
How can I tell how much my old, tarnished silver is worth?
For items such as forks, spoons and saucepans that are made from solid sterling silver it can be as simple as weighing your pieces on a kitchen scale and entering the weights and the material type (“silver 925” for sterling silver) into our payout estimator and use it to calculate your payout.
For other items that are not completely made of solid silver it can be a little more difficult. Knives for example usually have blades made of (stainless) steel in order to be more wear resistant. In these cases only the handles are made of silver. Also the tang, the back portion of a blade, usually extends inside the handle to make a strong connection between blade and handle. Items, such as teapots may come with wooden handles that are affixed with brass screws.
For these non solid items, you will have to take the total weight and then just subtract an estimated percentage of what you think is not made of silver in order to get a rough idea of the payout you can get for them.
A set of assorted, mismatched silverware can easily get you a payout of $ 1000. Give us a call (705) 302 1055 and our experts will help you estimating the silver content of your silver flatware or tableware. You can also send an inquiry via our contact form and attach a picture of your items.
How can I tell if my items are made from real silver and not just plated?
If your items bear one or more of the following hallmarks, they are made from real silver and we will buy them:
- Sterling (different fonts)
- Sterling Silver
- 925
- 958
- “Lion Passant Guardant” (embossed ahead looking lion)
- “Lion’s Head Erased” (Britannia silver standard, used a London town mark)
- “Britannia” (Britannia is holding a trident in her right hand, left hand resting on a shield, not to be confused with Hibernia, the Dublin town mark for sterling silver, left hand resting on a harp)
Note: We buy anything that has a piece of solid silver on it – even if only a small part of the handle is made of silver we will still buy it! The only things we will not buy are silver plated items or items made from other alloys that do not actually contain any silver.
The following markings indicate silver plated material, which we don’t buy:
- A1
- AA
- Coin Plate
- Deepsilver or Deep Silver
- Double or Double Plate
- Electroplate, EP
- EPC
- EPBM
- EPNS
- EPWM
- Extra Coin Plate
- Extra Plate
- Plate or Plated
- Plaque
- Quadruple or Quadruple Plate
- Reinforced Plate
- Silver Plate or Silverplate
- Silver Soldered
- Sterling Inlaid
- Sterling Plate
- Triple or Triple Plate
- XII
- XS
There are various alloys which contain the word “silver” in the name but don’t contain any real silver, some may have real silver plated onto a silverless base. We don’t buy any of the following:
- Alpaca or Alpacca Silver
- Aluminum Silver
- Austrian Silver
- Brazil or Brazilian Silver
- Bristol Silver
- Burmaroid Silver
- Chinese Silver
- England Silver
- German Silver, Solid G Silver
- Indian Silver
- Japanese Silver
- Laxey Silver
- Mexican Silver
- Nevada Silver
- Nickel Silver
- Paktong
- Pearl Silver
- Potosi Silver
- Sonora Silver
- Tyrol Silver
- Venetian Silver
- Yukon Silver
