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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 232293, member: 25&quot;]If the items were bought cheaply they were possibly the type of silver items that still sell cheaply. By cheaply I mean at a small or non existant premium over silver scrap value.</p><p>Things like part tea sets, compacts and cigarette cases, trays, odd pieces or part sets of flatware usually sell at auction for around metal value and are hard to shift at much more than a small premium. </p><p><br /></p><p>My triage method with such a hoard would be first to sort into a pile of clearly marked sterling, a pile of other stuff and a pile of weighted stuff. </p><p><br /></p><p>Starting with the first pile, sort it into boring and interesting stuff. This is harder, but let your own judgement guide you. If you would buy it and display or use it around the house, others probably would, so the premium is likely to be higher and it will be easier to sell. Here you are looking for design and quality, and experience helps to educate the eye. Condition is part of this, most damaged stuff is scrap, given the cost of repairing anything.</p><p><br /></p><p>All the boring stuff can go to a refinery, with all the damaged stuff. The more you have to sell the better the prices you can get for silver scrap. 5% under spot is an achievabe target at the right place. If you live in Dead Horse, Texas (pop. 23) you will have to ship or take it somewhere. Do not take run of the mill silver to an auction house. Buyers will only pay enough to get routine silver at about spot price (metal value) and the comissions will take away about 30% of this. Pretty well any pro siver buyer will pay 90% for a good weight, if pressed. </p><p>Make a note that small items of silver will often make quite large premiums over scrap, there are more collectors for most small items like match safes and model animals. </p><p><br /></p><p>For your second pile, establish if it is sterling or coin silver or some other grade, you will find various grades in imported stuff and there is no easy way unless you simply heap it all up and take it to a refinery, where it will all be turned into pure silver and weighed to give a value.</p><p>The thing is, the coin silver in that pile may be antique enough to have a premium of its own. One odd Federal period spoon with pseudo-marks but attributable to an early maker would fetch many times the price of an early 20th C sterling spoon. </p><p>The more time and energy spent on this pile, the greater the return.</p><p><br /></p><p>For the weighted stuff like candlesticks, cutlery handles, hand mirrors and brushes, etc, consider the hammer and anvil. Smash all the filling out of it and add it to the scrap pile. But if the piece looks attractive to you someonne may well buy it. There are no simple answers.</p><p><br /></p><p>What it boils down to is you will get out in proportion to the effort you put in. Unless you are really strapped for money, selling it slowly and carefully is the better plan, there is however simply no single answer to what it is worth apart from the scrap metal value.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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