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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MrNate, post: 2459363, member: 5515&quot;]Let me add a few more thoughts, because your questions really were great. Let&#039;s try to work systematically on this game based on tone and texture:</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 1: Looks heavy (bad). Fails the tone test to me, it looks very brown like copper would. Very uniform tarnish. I want to see deep/dark tarnish in the cracks and crevices and it&#039;s not there. If I was really interested in this one I would ask for a photo of the bottom. Even if there weren&#039;t marks, it would give me a chance to look at the feet and I would either see quality manufacturing indicators or clumsy joints from the manufacturing process. And the pattern on the dish looks like a manufactured pattern, not hand carved which you would see with most sterling pieces. Analysis: very low possibility of being sterling.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 2: Fails the tone test to me, but with all the picks from others I might have overlooked this one. The handle size looks most promising, but the texture of the metal looks too smooth to me. If sterling, I wouldn&#039;t expect the shape of the base for proper support and I would expect to see scrapes and scratches being a soft metal. The base looks wrong to me, the tarnish looks too uniform. Analysis: moderate to low possibility of being sterling.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 3: Really hard to say much without asking for more photos. Generally getting really big sterling pieces in these types of lots is low. Just based on experience, I&#039;m guessing a big chunky tray like this is going to be plated 95% of the time. I don&#039;t waste much time asking about something like this. The rim looks brown to me, so I would just be guessing but would conclude plated and not waste much effort.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 4: fails the tone test completely. Nothing looks like silver here. Uniform tarnish, dark brown. Looks 100% manufactured.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 5: This passes the tone test in a few areas, but it&#039;s hard to say right now. What I like: i like the unevenness of the tarnish on the base of the bowl. But contrast the tarnish color to items 8 and 10 and it&#039;s a hard call. I do see the waviness of the metal on the base. The big issue I have with item 5 is it looks heavy, and that&#039;s not a good thing in my analysis. Silver manufactures for the most part want to conserve the precious metal they are using...Unless you are Tiffany, why would I make a 500 gram bowl that I can sell for $90 (obviously old prices) when I can make the same shape and size bowl using 180 grams of sterling and sell for the same price? I hope to be wrong on 5, but for now I&#039;m saying plated. With that bowl, it could go either way, my analysis really isn&#039;t conclusive but it doesn&#039;t need to be because of the other two items.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 6: Right out of the gate, it looks heavy, I don&#039;t see the soft tone, I see a very sharp and &quot;stainless steel&quot; looking surface. The uniformity of the tarnish on the rim looks bad to me. Heavy, no wavy metal, no soft tone. Analysis: high probability plated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 7: Not even sure we are dealing with silverplate on this one. Initial guess is very new silverplate, stainless steel or pewter. Sterling would look like this bowl when recently polished, but based on the state of the other pieces I find it very unlikely this seller polished anything. Not worth the time to try to look deeper because there isn&#039;t really a tone analysis to do.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 9: based on the photo they gave me, no indicators of being sterling.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 11: The tone looks very much like copper plate, but the big indicator to me is the edge/lip of the piece. To me, this screams of a manufacturing process where they stamp/form the piece in some big heavy machinery. It just looks manufactured to me. Like they said &quot;well let&#039;s slap a pattern on the edges so it doesn&#039;t look as ugly&quot; in the dying breath of the silver manufacturing industry.</p><p><br /></p><p>Item 12: clunky, heavy, poorly formed base, lack of details on such a heavy piece doesn&#039;t make sense, uniform tone, it screams of plate so not worth my time to research.</p><p><br /></p><p>I hope this help to give you some insight into the analysis part. I&#039;m not consciously thinking of these as I&#039;m looking over photos, I&#039;m just letting my eyes wander and my mind to consider the clues. Most of the time, I&#039;m looking for a reason to ask more questions to confirm my beliefs. Every now and then I&#039;m able to solve the puzzle without extra info, but most of the time I need to confirm this stuff because it&#039;s easy to be wrong. When I inquire, and they send photos, they are telling me information that the rest of the market doesn&#039;t have, and that can be very valuable.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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