What to keep back: the pieces worth having looked at properly first

01

The four families, and the one thing that gives each away

Most of what comes out of a drawer is worth its metal and nothing more, and there is no point pretending otherwise. But a minority is not, and the minority is identifiable. Each of the four has a single obvious tell, and if none of the four tells is present you can stop worrying and get on with it.

Four families of piece that regularly beat their metal

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Notice that none of the four tells requires you to judge quality. You are not being asked whether the brooch is good, only whether it has a name on it. That is deliberate: the judging is the specialist's job and the spotting is yours, and the spotting is the part that has to happen before anything is packed.

02

Signed pieces: where the name is, and what counts as one

A signature on jewellery is usually a word rather than a monogram, and it sits alongside the metal marks rather than replacing them. On a ring it is inside the shank next to the fineness mark. On a brooch it is on the back plate, often near the pin fitting. On a bracelet it is on the clasp or on a tag beside it. On anything in a case, it is inside the case as well as on the piece.

A sponsor's mark is not a signature. A sponsor's mark is initials in a shaped shield and it belongs to whoever submitted the piece for hallmarking, which is often a wholesaler rather than a designer. A signature is a name meant to be read: a word, a surname, occasionally a full name and a place. If you can read it as a word, photograph it.

• Costume jewellery is signed as often as precious jewellery, and some costume names are collected as seriously as gold. A signed base-metal brooch can be worth many times a similar unsigned one, and metal value has nothing to do with it.
• A fitted case with a name printed inside the lid is worth keeping even when the piece is unsigned. It tells a specialist where the piece came from and it is part of what they are buying.
• Repairs and replacements complicate a signature. A signed clasp on an unsigned chain usually means the clasp was replaced, or that the chain was. It is still worth photographing; it is not proof about the whole piece.
• A name you do not recognise is still a name. Recognition is not the test, and the list of names that matter is longer than anyone can carry in their head.

03

Watches: the ones that run, and the ones that used to

A gold watch case sold for its metal is destroyed, and a watch destroyed is a decision that cannot be reversed. That is reason enough to take the extra week before deciding, even for a watch nobody in the family ever thought much of.

1. See whether it runsWind a mechanical watch gently, a few turns, and listen. If it ticks or the seconds hand moves, it runs, and a watch that runs is a watch rather than a case. A quartz watch needs a battery before you can tell, and a jeweller will fit one cheaply.
2. Read the dialThe name on the dial is the one that matters most. Photograph it square on, in even light, without flash, and get the small print under the name as well if there is any.
3. Look at the case, but do not open itA gold case carries hallmarks, usually inside the back, sometimes on the outside of a lug. Case backs are a precision fit and scratch the moment a blade goes near them. A jeweller opens one properly in seconds.
4. Find the box and papersA box, a guarantee card, a service receipt or the original bill changes what a watch specialist is looking at. People throw these away and regret it. Look in the same drawer before you decide there are none.
5. Then ask a watch specialist, not a metal buyerA watch buyer is competing for the watch; a metal buyer can only ever compete for the case. Those are different amounts of money and the difference is often large.

The exception is a case with no movement in it, or a movement so far gone that a repairer has already said no. Those really are just cases, and the gold watches page explains how a case and its movement are assessed and what happens to each.

04

Coins: the date, the letter, and why a run matters

Coins are the family where an amateur can get furthest on their own, because everything that matters is printed on the coin. Two minutes and a phone camera will tell you whether you are holding something ordinary.

Read the date first. Then look for a single small letter near it, which on a sovereign sits on the ground line above the date or below the shield. Then look at the portrait and the design on the reverse. Those four together are what a dealer looks up, and the sovereigns guide goes through them in detail.

A run of dates deserves its own mention, because it is the thing families most often break up without realising. Somebody who bought one sovereign a year for twenty years has a set, and the set can be worth more than the same twenty coins scattered. The same is true of a date run of crowns, of a part-set of commemoratives, and of anything still in the packaging it was sold in. Count what you have and see whether it makes a sequence before you send any of it.

05

Antique silver: marks, sets and surfaces

Silver announces itself more clearly than anything else in a house, because a full English hallmark on old silver is four or five separate marks struck in a row, and you can count them without knowing what any of them mean.

• Count the marks. Four separate punches, including a letter in a shield, mean a fully marked piece with a date on it. Three marks and no date letter usually mean a piece hallmarked since 1999, when the date letter became optional. A row of pseudo-marks on a base-metal body, or the letters EPNS, means electroplate, and EPNS, A1 and Sheffield plate explained sets out the rest of the letters.
• Look for a sovereign's head. A monarch's head as a fifth mark indicates duty paid, which brackets a piece to between 1784 and 1890. It is the quickest age check there is.
• Check whether the set is complete. A tea set with all its pieces, a canteen with every place setting, a pair of anything rather than one of it: completeness is worth real money and it is destroyed the moment a set is split.
• Look at the surface before you polish it. An even, soft grey sheen built up over a century is original surface, and specialists want it. A bright mirror finish from a polishing wheel is not, and it cannot be put back.
• Read the lid as well as the body. Detachable parts carry their own marks. A lid whose marks do not match its pot is a marriage of two pieces, which matters to a specialist and does not matter at all to a metal buyer.

The antique silver guide carries a five-signal checklist you can score at your own table, and it is the better place to go once you have established that the marks are there to read.

06

Who to ask, and what asking actually costs

People put off getting an opinion because they imagine it involves fees, appointments and being made to feel foolish. In practice the obstacles are smaller than that, and the cost of not asking is the larger of the two.

• Auction houses look at things. Many hold open valuation days, and most will look at photographs by email. They are looking for saleable lots, so they have a direct interest in spotting one, and being told a piece is not for them is a useful answer too.
• Specialist dealers look at things in their own field. A coin dealer will look at coins, a watch dealer at watches. Ask two rather than one if the answer matters to you.
• A local jeweller will open a watch case, fit a battery, read a mark under a loupe and tell you whether a stone is worth taking further. This is small, cheap work and most will do it while you wait.
• A formal written valuation is a different thing again, costs money and is usually only needed for probate or insurance. For the question this guide is about, an informal opinion is what you want.

What you should not do is take the first figure anyone gives you as the answer, in either direction. An opinion that a piece is ordinary is worth having from two people, and so is an opinion that it is special.

07

Seller risks and exceptions

• Assuming the family story is right. Pieces get described as older, grander or more important than they are, and occasionally as much less. The marks and the maker are checkable; the story usually is not.
• Assuming the family story is wrong. The opposite happens just as often. A watch everybody called cheap, a brooch nobody liked, a coin that lived in a button tin: these do turn up, and the reason is usually that nobody looked.
• Getting a piece cleaned before an opinion. Cleaning, polishing, re-plating and having a stone reset all take value off an old piece and none of them can be undone. Get the opinion first and do the work afterwards if at all.
• Waiting indefinitely. Getting an opinion is worth a few weeks; it is not worth a year of the box sitting in a wardrobe while nobody rings anyone. Set yourself a date.
• Confusing an insurance valuation with what a piece would sell for. An insurance figure is a replacement cost and it is normally much higher than what anybody would pay you. An old insurance schedule is useful for identifying pieces and misleading about money.
• Sending the flagged piece anyway. If we tell you something should be looked at, and you send it regardless without getting the opinion, we will tell you again rather than quietly process it. Nothing is sold until you say yes.

08

When not to bother getting an opinion

Most of a normal box does not need any of this, and treating every broken chain as a possible treasure is its own kind of trap. It costs weeks, it costs patience, and it usually ends where it started.

• Broken chain, single earrings, bent rings and odd links with no name on them anywhere.
• Plain modern jewellery with a fineness mark and nothing else, however nice it is.
• Twentieth-century plain silver in a pattern nobody collects, especially incomplete.
• Watches with no name on the dial, no movement, or a movement a repairer has already refused.
• Common-date circulated coins with no mint mark and no unusual feature, once you have checked them.
• Anything that has already been to an auction house or a dealer and been turned down.

For all of that, a single parcel, an itemised list and one written offer is a straightforward way to be finished with it. Send photographs first so that anything in the box which does not belong on this list gets pulled out before it travels, and read the guide to sorting a box if you have not started yet.