The marks decide it. Sterling silver is stamped 925, STERLING, or carries a set of hallmarks such as the British lion passant; silver plate is stamped with words like EPNS, A1, Quadruple Plate or a maker name like Rogers with no purity mark. Most inherited silverware turns out to be plate, which usually sells for a few dollars a piece. A sterling set is a different story: it is worth at least its weight in silver, and a full service can be worth hundreds to a few thousand dollars.
Color, shine and tarnish will not tell you which you have. Plate and sterling tarnish the same way and look identical on a dining table. Turn the piece over and read the back of the handle, or the underside of a bowl, teapot or tray.
Sterling marks to look for
Sterling is 92.5 percent pure silver. Different countries mark it in different ways, and you will often find the purity number alongside a maker's mark.
American and modern marks
- STERLING: the standard American mark, often with a maker name such as Gorham, Towle, Reed and Barton, Wallace, International or Tiffany.
- 925 or .925: the modern international mark for sterling.
- Coin silver (COIN, PURE COIN, 900): older American silver from before about 1860, 90 percent pure.
British hallmarks
British silver usually carries a row of small stamped marks:
- A lion passant (a walking lion facing left): the sterling standard mark.
- A town mark: a leopard's head for London, an anchor for Birmingham, a crown (later a rose) for Sheffield, a castle for Edinburgh.
- A date letter in a shaped shield, which dates the piece to a single year when it is legible.
- A maker's mark, usually initials in a shield.
Watch for pseudo-hallmarks: small symbols arranged to look British on plated pieces and on Asian export silver. Real British marks are crisp, struck in a row, and include the lion.
Continental, Scandinavian and Mexican silver
- 800, 830, 835: continental silver, 80 to 83.5 percent pure. Still solid silver, just a lower standard than sterling.
- 830S: common on Norwegian and Danish spoons, often with a maker name and a town. Solid silver.
- Russian silver reads 84 or 875 (84 zolotniks is 87.5 percent).
- Mexican silver: 925, often with an eagle assay mark on pieces from roughly the late 1940s to about 1980, and later a letter and number code such as TS-24 for Taxco makers. Solid silver.
Silver plate marks
Silver plate is base metal, usually nickel silver or copper, with a thin layer of silver on top. Common marks:
- EPNS: electroplated nickel silver.
- EP, EPBM, EPC: electroplate on nickel, Britannia metal or copper.
- A1, AA, or XII: grades of plate thickness, not purity.
- Quadruple Plate or Triple Plate: plate, despite the impressive sound.
- Community, Oneida Community, Holmes and Edwards, Wm. Rogers, 1847 Rogers Bros.: well-known American plate makers.
- Silverplate, Silver Soldered, Silver on Copper.
Note that "nickel silver", "German silver" and "Alpaca" contain no silver at all. Some makers, Oneida and Rogers among them, made both plate and sterling, so read the whole mark rather than the brand name.
Worn plate gives itself away at the high points and edges, where a yellowish or coppery base metal shows through. Sterling wears smooth and stays silver all the way through.
Weighted sterling
Candlesticks, compotes, salt cellars, and the hollow handles of sterling knives are often "weighted": a thin sterling shell filled with pitch, plaster or cement. They are stamped STERLING and sometimes WEIGHTED or REINFORCED. The stamp is real, but most of what you are weighing is filler. A pair of weighted candlesticks that weighs 800 grams might contain 80-150 grams of actual silver. Buyers know this and price accordingly.
How to work out melt value
Solid sterling has a floor value: what the silver in it is worth. The formula:
weight in grams x 0.925 x spot price per gram of pure silver
Silver is priced per troy ounce, and one troy ounce is 31.1 grams. Assume silver is about $40 per troy ounce, which is roughly $1.29 per gram (the price moves daily, so check it before you do the math).
A worked example
Say you have a box of sterling forks and spoons, no knives, that weighs 1,500 grams on a kitchen scale:
- 1,500 g x 0.925 = 1,388 g of pure silver
- 1,388 g x $1.29 = about $1,790 in melt value
Scrap buyers usually pay roughly 70-90 percent of melt, so about $1,250-1,600 here. Leave hollow-handled knives out of the weight, or weigh them separately and count only the blade and a small amount of silver for the handle. A single sterling dinner fork of about 50 grams holds roughly $60 of silver at that price. A silver plate fork of the same size holds a few cents.
What silverware is actually worth
| Item | Approximate value |
|---|---|
| Single silver plate spoon or fork | $1-5 |
| Silver plate flatware set in a chest | $20-100 |
| Silver plate tea set or tray | $20-150 |
| Single sterling fork or spoon | $20-80, mostly melt |
| Sterling flatware service for 8-12 | $500-3,000, mostly melt |
| Pair of weighted sterling candlesticks | $50-250 |
| Scandinavian 830S spoon | $15-60 |
| Georg Jensen, Tiffany or Paul Storr pieces | Well above melt, from hundreds |
The honest value of plate
Silver plate has no metal floor. Scrap buyers do not want it, and the market is crowded with chests of plate from every estate. A complete set in a nice chest can sell for $20-100, single pieces for a dollar or two, and a dented teapot sometimes for nothing. Pieces with good Art Deco or Arts and Crafts design, and some hotel and railroad silver with clear logos, do better, but those are the exceptions.
Flatware sets
For sterling flatware, three things matter beyond the weight:
- Maker and pattern. Tiffany, Georg Jensen and some Gorham patterns sell to people completing sets and can exceed melt. Common patterns usually sell near melt.
- Completeness. A service for 12 with serving pieces sells more easily than a partial set.
- Monograms. An engraved monogram reduces collector interest but not melt value.
Buyers looking to replace lost pieces sometimes pay more per piece than melt for popular patterns, so check sold prices for your pattern name before scrapping a set.
What to photograph
The photos that settle most cases:
- A sharp close-up of the mark on the back of a handle or the underside of the piece, in daylight, with a coin for scale.
- For British silver, all the hallmarks in one frame, straight on.
- The whole set laid out, so the pattern and count are visible.
- A close-up of any worn edge, which shows whether base metal is coming through.
- The weight in grams, measured on a kitchen scale.
If the mark is worn or ambiguous, a jeweler or precious metals dealer can do an acid or XRF test in minutes. For designer pieces, early American silver or anything with a famous maker, an auction house silver specialist or an accredited appraiser gives the real answer. The same melt value logic applies to silver jewelry; see is my old jewelry real gold for the gold version. Silver coins follow it too, and our guide to inherited coins explains which ones are worth more than their metal.