Antique silver or scrap silver, and how to tell the difference

01

What lifts a piece of silverware above its metal

As metal, a piece of silverware is its weight and its fineness. Intact, it is also five things a scale cannot measure, and they can pull against one another. A worn, incomplete set by a recognised maker can fetch less as a set than a heavy, complete canteen by an unknown maker.

Maker

A small number of Georgian and Victorian silversmiths, and a few twentieth-century workshops, are sought by collectors and the trade. Their sponsor's mark can lift a piece well above its metal. Most sponsor's marks belong to makers nobody collects, and on later pieces in plain patterns those usually trade on weight.

Date

Read from the date letter. Eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century pieces attract more interest than late Victorian or twentieth-century ones of the same type. An early piece by a maker nobody has heard of can still sell above its weight.

Completeness

A tea set with its teapot, coffee pot, sugar bowl, cream jug and tray, or a canteen with every place setting, is worth more than the sum of its parts. Odd pieces drift back towards weight.

Condition

Dents, splits, erased or re-engraved crests, replaced handles and lead-solder repairs all lower what a piece is worth intact, and some of them take silver off it as well.

Pattern

Flatware in a named pattern that people still collect and match can sell as replacements. Plain patterns with no following are priced on weight. A rare pattern or an unusual form is a different matter, and scores high on the checklist below.

Assaypost buys sterling, Britannia standard and tested continental silverware for its metal. The tea sets and hollowware and cutlery and flatware pages say what is and is not taken. This guide is about the decision that comes first: whether your piece should be sold for its metal at all.

02

Reading a full hallmark set on silverware

A full UK hallmark on silverware is several marks struck close together, and each answers a different question. Tea sets and canteens are usually marked on every principal piece, and lids and detachable parts are often marked on their own. Check that the marks on a lid match the body. Pieces from different sets put together, known in the trade as married pieces, are common.

• The sponsor's mark gives the initials of the maker or firm that sent the piece for assay, inside a shaped shield. It is the mark that identifies a recognised maker.
• The standard mark says the silver is of a legal standard. On sterling assayed in England it is the lion passant. Scottish sterling carries a thistle or a lion rampant, and Irish sterling a crowned harp. Britannia standard (958) carries the figure of Britannia. Modern pieces also carry the figure 925 or 958.
• The assay office mark is the symbol of the office that tested the piece, which tells you where it was assayed.
• The date letter is a letter in a particular style and shield that gives the year of assay. The cycles repeat, so the letter has to be read with the shield shape and the office. The guide to hallmark date letters takes you through a reading step by step.
• The duty mark is a small head of the reigning king or queen, struck on pieces assayed between 1784 and 1890, when a tax was paid on silver. Whether it is there helps to bracket the date.

The legal standards for silver under the Hallmarking Act 1973 are 800, 925, 958 and 999. Pieces under 7.78 g are exempt from compulsory hallmarking, which is why small spoons and salt cellars are sometimes unmarked. A heavier piece with no mark is not necessarily silver. It may be electroplate, continental silver of a lower standard, or nickel silver, which contains no silver at all. The hallmarks and fineness guide goes through the marks in detail.

03

Weighted, filled and mixed-construction pieces

Some of the heaviest-feeling silverware holds the least silver. Many candlesticks, trophy bases, salt and pepper shakers and some dressing-table pieces are thin sheet silver over a filling of pitch, plaster or resin, often with an steel rod inside for stiffness. The hallmark on such a piece is real, but it covers the sheet and not the filling.

• A pair of loaded candlesticks marked sterling can be mostly filling. Only the silver sheet counts. Nothing is opened before you accept an offer, so the silver in it is assessed from the outside and the offer says it is an assessment.
• Sterling knife handles are hollow shells filled with resin or pitch around a steel blade. The blade and the filling are not silver. Forks and spoons are solid.
• Silver-mounted claret jugs, biscuit barrels and inkwells have silver only in the mount, and the mount is often hard to separate from the glass or ceramic without breaking something.
• Lead-solder repairs contaminate the metal, so a repaired area is noted on the item list and its weight left out of the assessment.

The weighted and loaded silver guide explains how filling is found and how the silver in a shell is assessed. For this decision the point is simpler. A loaded piece holds little silver, so whatever it is worth as an object counts for more of the decision.

04

A scored checklist for the intact-or-scrap decision

You do not need to score anything. Send photographs of the marks and you will be told what can be read from them. If you would like to check for yourself first, score each signal from 0 to 3 using the table, add the points, and read the total against the bands below. A single signal at 3 is reason enough to ask, whatever the total.

Scoring the intact-or-scrap decision

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1. A total of 0 to 4, with no single signal at 3, suggests the piece is probably worth its metal. Send photographs first so the marks can be read. If you then decide to post, we arrange the postage with you and confirm the service and its cover in writing before anything is sent.
2. A total of 5 to 8 means it is worth sending photographs and asking outright whether anything should go to a specialist. You get a reply before you post, though some pieces can only be judged in the hand.
3. A total of 9 to 15 means getting a specialist or auction-house opinion before you sell it for its metal. You can still sell it here afterwards if the intact route comes to nothing, but decide with that opinion in hand.

05

The checklist run over two sets of spoons

Take two invented sets of twelve dessert spoons, identical in weight.

The first set carries the sponsor's mark of a maker a specialist would recognise, a Georgian date letter, twelve matching pieces from one year, crisp original surfaces with no erased crest, and a pattern people still collect. That scores three, three, three, three and two: fourteen out of fifteen. The metal in those spoons is the least they are worth, and selling them for it would be a mistake you could not undo.

The second set is by a firm that is known but not collected, hallmarked 1930 and 1931, so complete but made up from two years, with wear to the bowls and a dent in one of them, in a plain pattern with no following. One, one, two, one and zero: five out of fifteen, with no signal at 3. It sits in the middle band, so the next step is to send photographs of the marks and ask before anything is packed.

The two sets weigh the same. Weight tells you nothing about which of them to keep whole, which is why nothing on this site asks you to work anything out from a weight.

06

Seller risks and exceptions

• Being paid by weight for a maker's piece. A buyer who does not read sponsor's marks, or chooses not to, treats everything as metal. Ask for the sponsor's mark and the date letter to be written on each line of the item list.
• Splitting a set. Selling the teapot to one buyer and the rest elsewhere loses the value of the complete set for both halves. Decide on the set as a whole.
• Erased crests and monograms. Grinding out an engraved crest thins the metal and leaves a visible dip in the surface. It lowers what the piece is worth intact and, in bad cases, takes silver off it too.
• Plated pieces mixed into a sterling lot. A canteen built up over generations often contains plated replacements. They are separated out and listed, so there will be less sterling in the parcel than there was cutlery in the box.
• Filled handles and loaded bases. The silver in knives, many candlesticks and some hollowware is a fraction of what the piece weighs. See the section above and the weighted silver guide.
• Specialist routes have costs. Auction commission, cataloguing time and the wait for a sale all come off what you receive. A specialist's opinion is worth getting, though not always worth acting on.

07

When not to use the scrap route

Selling for metal suits worn or damaged twentieth-century pieces, incomplete later sets by unknown makers, and plain twentieth-century hollowware and flatware in patterns nobody collects. It also suits anyone who has had a specialist's opinion and found that the intact route, once commission and waiting are counted, comes to less than the metal. Then one parcel and one written offer for the lot close the matter, and the silver selling page explains what happens next.