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 and nothing else. Intact, it is five things a scale cannot measure, and they pull against one another. A worn, incomplete set by a recognised maker can do worse intact than a heavy, complete canteen by nobody in particular.

Maker

A handful 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 metal. Most sponsor's marks belong to makers nobody collects, and those pieces 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, other things being equal.

Completeness

A tea set with its teapot, coffee pot, sugar bowl, cream jug and tray, or a canteen with every place setting present, 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 or unusual patterns with no following are priced on weight.

Assaypost buys sterling and Britannia standard silverware for its metal, and 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 before any of that, which is 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 separate 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, because married pieces are common.

• The sponsor's mark gives the initials of the maker or firm that submitted the piece, inside a shaped shield. It is the mark that identifies a recognised maker.
• The standard mark is the lion passant on sterling assayed in England, or the figure of Britannia on 958 Britannia standard. Modern pieces also carry the millesimal figure, 925 or 958.
• The assay office mark is the symbol of the office that tested the piece, which places it geographically.
• The date letter is a letter in a particular style and shield that identifies the year of assay. The cycles repeat, so the letter has to be read together with the shield shape and the office.
• The duty mark is a sovereign's head on pieces assayed between 1784 and 1890, when duty was paid on silver. Its presence or absence helps to bracket the date.

The approved finenesses 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. 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 iron rod inside for stiffness. The hallmark on such a piece is real, but it certifies the sheet, not the filling.

• A pair of loaded candlesticks marked sterling can be mostly filling. Only the silver sheet counts, and before any offer its weight is a stated assessment made from the outside, because nothing is opened before you have accepted (clause 4.4 of the terms).
• 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, and all of them count.
• 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 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 established. For this decision the point is simpler: a loaded piece is more likely than a solid one to be worth more as an object, precisely because so little of it is silver.

04

A scored checklist for the intact-or-scrap decision

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 on its own, whatever the total comes to.

Scoring the intact-or-scrap decision

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1. A total of 0 to 4, with no single signal at 3, means selling it for its metal is very likely the right route. Send photographs first so the marks can be read, then request a prepaid label if you are happy to go ahead.
2. A total of 5 to 8 means it is worth sending photographs and asking outright whether anything here should be looked at by a specialist. You will get an answer before you post anything.
3. A total of 9 to 15 means get a specialist or auction-house opinion before you sell it for metal at all. You can still send it here afterwards if the intact route comes to nothing, but decide with that opinion in your hand rather than without it.

05

The checklist run over two sets of spoons

The scores mean more once you have watched someone else use them, so here are two invented sets of twelve dessert spoons, identical in weight, that land in completely different places.

The first set carries the sponsor's mark of a maker a specialist recognises on sight, a Georgian date letter, twelve matching pieces from one year, crisp original surfaces with no erased crest, and a pattern people still collect and match. That scores three, three, three, three and two: fourteen out of fifteen. The metal in those spoons is a floor and nothing more, and selling them for it would be a mistake you could not undo.

The second set is by a firm nobody has heard of, hallmarked 1930, complete, with wear to the bowls and a dent in one of them, in a plain pattern with no following. Zero, one, three, one and zero: five out of fifteen. That set belongs in the middle band, which means sending photographs of the marks and asking outright before anything is packed.

Notice that the two sets weigh the same. That is the whole argument of this guide in one sentence, and it is why nothing on this site invites 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 list.
• Splitting a set. Selling the teapot to one buyer and the rest elsewhere destroys the completeness premium 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 dish 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 assembled over generations usually 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, 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 reduce the net figure. A specialist opinion is worth getting; it is not always worth acting on.

07

When not to use the scrap route

This route suits worn or damaged pieces, incomplete sets by unknown makers, twentieth-century plain hollowware and flatware in patterns nobody collects. It also suits anyone who has had the specialist opinion and found that the intact route, once commission and waiting are counted, comes to less than the metal. In that case an itemised list and one written offer is a straightforward way to be done with it, and the silver selling page explains what happens next.