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

01

The four families, and the sign that gives each away

Most of what comes out of a drawer is worth its metal and nothing more. A minority is not. The four families below are the commonest, and each has a sign anyone can spot. They are not the only ones: stones of any size, anything that looks older than about the 1930s, enamel, cameos, lockets and mourning pieces, and anything you simply cannot place are worth asking about too.

Four families of piece that often beat their metal

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None of these signs asks you to judge quality. You are not being asked whether the brooch is good, only whether it has a name on it. The judging is the specialist's job; the spotting is yours, and it 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 initials in a shaped shield, and it belongs to whoever sent the piece for hallmarking, which on modern jewellery 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. Photograph the sponsor's mark too: on old silver it is usually the maker's mark, and some makers' initials, such as those of Charles Horner or Liberty & Co, are collected in their own right.

• 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, whatever its metal.
• 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 one of the two was replaced. It is still worth photographing, but it is not proof about the whole piece.
• A name you do not recognise is still a name. The list of names that matter is longer than anyone can carry in their head.

03

Watches by a known maker, running or not

A gold watch case sold for its metal is destroyed, and that cannot be reversed. A watch by a known maker is worth a specialist's look whether or not it runs: stopped watches are often worth repairing, and a known maker's case, dial and movement can sell as parts for far more than their gold.

1. Leave it as it isYou do not need to find out whether it runs. Do not wind it, try to start it or open the case. Case backs are a precision fit and scratch easily, and opening one is a job for a jeweller or a watch specialist.
2. Read the dialThe name on the dial matters most, though on many older pocket watches the maker's name is only on the movement inside. Photograph the dial square on, in even light, without flash, and include any small print under the name.
3. Look at the outside of the caseA gold case carries hallmarks, usually inside the back and sometimes on the outside of a lug. Photograph any marks you can see without opening anything.
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. Look in the same drawer before you decide there are none.
5. Then ask a watch specialistA watch buyer is competing for the watch; a metal buyer can only compete for the case. The difference is often large.

A case with no movement, or a movement a repairer has refused, may still be worth more as parts than as gold if it carries a known maker's name on the case, dial or movement. Ask a watch specialist before it is treated as a case. The gold watches page explains what happens to a case and its movement.

04

Coins: the date, the mint mark, and runs of dates

Coins are the family where you can get furthest on your own, because the date, the design and any mint mark are on the coin. Condition and authenticity are not, and those are the specialist's part.

Read the date first. Then look for a mint mark, a single small letter. On most sovereigns it sits on the ground line above the date or below the shield; on Young Head sovereigns struck at Melbourne and Sydney between 1871 and 1887 with St George on the reverse, it is under the portrait. Many valuable coins, including scarce London dates, have no mint mark at all. Then look at the portrait and the design on the reverse. Together these are what a dealer looks up, and the sovereigns guide goes through them in detail. Gold coins, sovereigns included, are worth one call to a coin dealer first: even a common one usually sells as a coin.

Families often break up runs of dates without realising. Somebody who bought one sovereign a year for twenty years has a run. A run of common dates seldom adds much on its own, but it may hold a scarcer date or mint, and a dealer should see it together before anything is split. The same goes for a date run of crowns, a part-set of commemoratives, and anything still in the packaging it was sold in.

05

Antique silver: marks, sets and surfaces

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. Much valuable early silver is only part-marked, though, so a short row is not a reason to treat a piece as ordinary.

• 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 can mean a piece hallmarked since 1999, when the letter became optional, but it can also mean a worn or part-struck row, or a small eighteenth-century piece marked with only a few punches; photograph it and ask. Marks made to look like hallmarks on a base-metal body, or the letters EPNS, mean electroplate, and EPNS, A1 and Sheffield plate explained sets out the rest of the letters.
• Look for the monarch's head. A small head of the king or queen in profile beside the other marks is usually the duty mark, struck between 1784 and 1890. Do not confuse it with a modern commemorative mark, such as the royal heads struck for the 1935 and 1977 Jubilees and the 1953 and 2023 Coronations; a commemorative mark sits beside a modern date letter.
• Check whether the set is complete. A tea set with all its pieces, a canteen with every place setting, a pair rather than one: completeness can add real money, especially with a known maker, and it is lost the moment a set is split.
• Look at the surface, and do not 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 cannot be undone.
• Read the lid as well as the body. Detachable parts carry their own marks. A lid whose marks do not match its pot did not start life with it, which matters to a specialist and not at all to a metal buyer.

The guide to antique or scrap silver has a five-signal checklist you can score at your own table once you have found the marks.

06

Who to ask, and what asking costs

People often put off getting an opinion because they expect fees and appointments. The obstacles are usually smaller than that.

• Many auction houses hold valuation days or will look at photographs by email. They are looking for saleable lots, so they have an 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 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, read a mark under a magnifier and tell you whether a stone is worth taking further. This is small work, often inexpensive, and many will do it while you wait.
• A formal written valuation is a different thing again. It costs money and is usually only needed for probate (open market value at the date of death) or insurance (the cost of replacing the piece, which is usually higher). For the question this guide is about, an informal opinion is what you want.

Do not 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 can be checked; the story usually cannot.
• Assuming the family story is wrong. A watch everybody called cheap, a brooch nobody liked, a coin that lived in a button tin: these do turn up, usually because 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.
• Leaving the special pieces mixed in with the rest. If you are not ready to decide, put anything worth an opinion in its own labelled bag, so it cannot be cleared or posted with everything else by mistake.
• Confusing an insurance valuation with what a piece would sell for. An insurance figure is a replacement cost and is normally much higher than what anybody would pay you. An old insurance schedule helps identify pieces but misleads about money.
• Sending a flagged piece anyway. If we tell you something should be looked at and you send it without getting the opinion, we will tell you again before any offer. 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. Treating every broken chain as possible treasure costs weeks and usually ends where it started.

• Broken modern chain, single earrings and bent rings with no stones, no name and nothing that looks older than the mid twentieth century.
• 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 sets.
• Watches with no maker's name on the dial, the movement or inside the case, once a jeweller has opened the back to look.
• Common-date silver coins in circulated condition, once you have checked the dates.
• Anything that has already been to an auction house or a dealer and been turned down.

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