Home » Forums » Daily Paul Liberty Forum

Sterling silver - is it worth it?

Submitted by cw canadian on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 19:55
in
0 votes

I just bought some Christmas presents at a local charity bazaar, you know, 50 cents to 2 dollars for someone elses's old stuff, but its great: embroidered tablelcloths, great old crystal one of a kind wine and champagne glasses, mmmhmm.

And it turns out I bought two candlesticks which are almost certainly sterling silver. Sweet! My dilemna is whether they will go to our close famiy hosting the "Christmas Dinner" or ...will I sell them and bring my fudge instead....

Are they saleable as silver? anyone know?

Is sterling a good market now that silver is up?

I can find more silver of that I am sure.

Grateful Thankls for any input. I am short of money these days.

»

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Great information.

Submitted by truthy on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 22:57.

Thanks for posting.

I have been buying sterling and gold at garage sales

Submitted by candance on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 21:44.

for about 10 years now. I mainly find jewelry but now and then some flatware or serving pieces.
I pick it up for next to nothing then turn around and sell it for scrap at a nice profit.
But as I have watched the dollar go down and gold and silver climb, I now sit on it rather than sell it. It helps I can look back and think about how much money I have lost selling it in the past when the price of gold and silver where much lower.

Sterling will either be marked "Sterling" or 925.
Most all serving pieces or candlesticks will be marked Sterling rather than .925. Unless it is quite old then it may not be marked at all.
Here is a good website for identifying some sterling makers marks.
http://www.925-1000.com/
Sterling is .925 in content and still has value just not as much as per say silver bars or coins at .999 content. But when you can pick it up for next to nothing there is a profit to be made.

good feedback, candance...

Submitted by cw canadian on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 22:18.

re your name, candance:
Do you know Men at Work - awesome 80s Aussie band - hit "You can dance it you want to" ? (they also did "Who can it be Now", "Down under" )

I like your idea of buying it and hanging on to it. I am inspired.

One more question if you don't mind..
At the sale there was quite a bit of silver plate, Rogers, which I did not buy. I can pick it up for next to nothing. Could you let me know if you have bought and sold it?

TIA

—

cw

Never heard of the group

Submitted by candance on Sun, 11/15/2009 - 02:58.

I will have to check out that song however :o)
The silver plate is basically worthless as is gold filled jewelry.
You will only be able to sell it for collector value and not for the metal.

I only buy .925 or Sterling and try to stick with 14K gold or better jewelry, but if the price is right I will buy 10K.
But if you are looking into picking up gold jewelry it is best to educate yourself so you don't buy the wrong stuff or pass up good stuff.
For example don't buy any jewelry that is marked 14K HGE, 14K GF
14K GEP..etc etc
It is basically filled or electroplated and not worth anything.
BUT you do want to buy the gold if it is marked something like 14K P
The P stands for plumb gold which means if the ring was resized they used the same gold content when resizing it..hence the plumb.
They rarely do that anymore and it is more common on older pieces.

Also .585 is 14K gold, .750 is 18K. etc etc.
I picked up a nice heavy 21K gold bangle bracelet for $1.00 at a Goodwill second hand store that normally marks their gold jewelry pretty high but they missed this one simply because it was marked .875.
Here is a good guide for how they mark gold in the UK which is what you are more likely to run into in Canada.
http://www.jewellerycatalogue.co.uk/gold/assay_hallmark.php
Good Luck and happy hunting..it is addicting. :o)

wrong men

Submitted by Thundercloud on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 22:41.

It was Men without Hats, on the We can dance song.
Goofy, but catchy tune.
Men at work, made so much money on the rights to Down under..

Listening closely to you silver stories too. My wife and I haven't been yard sale-ing in a while

—

"I don't endorse anything they say"
~Ron Paul On the 911 Truth movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGyhlNY0y1k

Men without Hats ...you're right....

Submitted by cw canadian on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 23:00.

and a Canadian band..whoa My bad. Loved the Aussie bands though.

It was all in the Same time frame - my college days which are all a bit of a haze back there in time, but fun?! Oh yeah.

Oh, and Yard sales are on my list now.

—

cw

Thank you both.

Submitted by cw canadian on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 21:04.

I will see my silver guy Monday and he can direct me where to take them.

What I do know is they are made in India. I peeled off some rough looking felt from the bottom of each and there are marks but I can't find what they mean. The candlesticks appear to be silver all the way through, from the underneath pov. They are heavy. They are not marked as weighted or plated, They were marketed by a major higher end retailer at some point but I can't find pictures of them anywhere online. They are very simple and chunky.

Thank you for your interest and thoughful comments.

If I get rich off buying and selling cheap silver trinkets I will let you all know.

—

cw

Coin Pawn Shop Combo

Submitted by HawaiianDude on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 20:15.

A coin and Pawn Shop combo would be able to help. They can do the test on silver (conductivity -resistence tes it think). Then they can offer a scarp silver or the finished good value.

Be careful of an offer like (it isn't silver but I can give you x for the candlesick) . Becasue it is real silver or from some famous manufacturer and they are worth a ton more.

Weigh the sticks before you go in. - Do the math to figure a pure silver value so that you know the max scap value.