Is it sterling, or is it plate?
This is the question that decides everything else. Sterling has real melt value. Plate has almost none, however heavy the piece feels and however old it looks. The tests below cost nothing and take about ten minutes.
The short version
- Look for a mark. Sterling is nearly always stamped.
- Test with a magnet. Silver is not magnetic.
- Weigh it. Plate is light for its size.
- Acid test only if the first three leave you unsure.
Read the mark first
Most silver tells you what it is, if you know where to look. Turn the piece over and check the underside of the base, the back of a handle, the inside of a ring or the rim of a bowl. You are looking for a small stamp, often worn, sometimes only a few millimetres across. A jeweller's loupe helps enormously and costs very little.
What you find falls into a few families, and the family matters more than the exact mark.
| What the mark says | What it means | Silver content |
|---|---|---|
| STERLING, STER, or 925 | Solid sterling silver, the standard across most of the world | 92.5% |
| Lion passant (walking lion) | British sterling. Usually accompanied by a date letter and city mark | 92.5% |
| 800, 830, 835, 900 | Continental European silver. Common on German, Italian and Scandinavian pieces | 80% to 90% |
| COIN or 900 | American coin silver, mostly pre-1870 flatware | 90% |
| EPNS, EP, A1, SILVER ON COPPER | Electroplate. A microscopic silver skin over a base metal | Effectively nil |
| NICKEL SILVER, GERMAN SILVER, ALPACCA | Contains no silver at all despite the name | None |
| No mark whatsoever | Inconclusive. Could be old, could be foreign, could be plate | Test it |
The two marks that fool people most
German silver and nickel silver contain no silver. They are copper, nickel and zinc alloys named for their color, and they turn up constantly in inherited canteens. EPNS means electroplated nickel silver, which is the same base metal with a plated skin. None of it has melt value. This is the single most common disappointment in this whole process, and it is better to find out at your own table than from a stranger.
Three tests you can do right now
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The magnet test
Silver is not magnetic. Neither is copper or brass, but steel and most plated base metals are. Use a strong magnet, ideally a neodymium one. If the piece jumps to the magnet, it is not solid silver. If it does not, you have ruled out steel but not plate, so keep going. A useful refinement: hold a strong magnet at a shallow angle against a real silver bar and it slides slowly, because silver's conductivity creates a braking effect. Nothing else in the drawer does that.
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The weight and wear test
Sterling is dense and feels substantial for its size. Plate over a lighter base metal feels wrong in the hand once you have held both. Then check the high-wear points: the back of a spoon bowl, the edge of a tray, the tip of a fork tine. Plate wears through at exactly those places and shows a warmer, yellower or grayer metal underneath. That copper glow through a worn spoon is conclusive, and no amount of polishing will change what is beneath.
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The ice test
Silver conducts heat better than almost any metal on earth. Put an ice cube on the piece and another on a similar shaped piece of stainless or plate. On real silver the cube begins visibly melting almost at once. It is not laboratory grade, but it is fast, free, and surprisingly reliable across a drawer of mixed cutlery.
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The acid test, only if you must
A silver testing acid kit costs a few pounds and gives a definitive answer, but it removes a small amount of metal and leaves a mark. Use it on an inconspicuous spot, never on a hallmark, and never on anything that might have value as an object rather than as metal. On sterling the solution goes a creamy red. On plate it turns green once you break through the skin. If a piece is decorative, signed, or older than you can date, stop and get an opinion before you touch it with acid.
When the object is worth more than the metal
This is where people lose the most money, and it happens quietly. A buyer paying melt value has no reason to tell you that the teapot in front of them is a collectable piece worth several times its weight in silver. Some will tell you anyway. Many will not.
Stop and get a second opinion before selling by weight if a piece is signed by a known maker, if it is Georgian or earlier, if it is part of a complete matched canteen in its original case, if it carries an unusual or armorial engraving, or if it is a form that collectors chase - a caster set, a wine funnel, an early American piece. The same applies to anything by Tiffany, Georg Jensen, or a named Arts and Crafts silversmith. Those names carry a premium that melt value ignores entirely.
The rule of thumb: melt value is a floor, not a price. If a piece might clear that floor as an object, find out before it goes in the envelope, because melting is the one decision you cannot reverse.
Once you know what you have, the next question is what it is worth. That is arithmetic, and the melt value page walks through it. If your pieces turn out to be coins rather than flatware, the coin and bar reference covers those separately, because coins are the category where the object most often beats the metal.
Reading a British hallmark
British silver carries the most complete marking system in the world, and once you can read it you can date a piece to the year. There are usually four marks in a row, sometimes five.
The standard mark
A walking lion means sterling, 92.5 percent. A seated Britannia figure means Britannia standard, 95.8 percent, used mainly between 1697 and 1720 and occasionally since. Either way you have solid silver.
The town mark
A leopard's head is London. An anchor is Birmingham. A crown was Sheffield until 1974. A castle is Edinburgh. The town mark tells you where the piece was tested, which is often not where it was made.
The date letter
A single letter in a shaped shield, cycling through the alphabet with the font and shield changing each cycle. This is what lets you date a piece exactly, using any published hallmark table.
The maker's mark
Usually initials in a shield. This is the one that can transform the value of a piece, because a recognized maker turns metal into an antique.
The duty mark
A monarch's head, found on pieces made between 1784 and 1890, showing the duty tax had been paid. Its presence helps confirm a date range.
So what is silver plate actually worth?
Close to nothing as metal, and it is worth being blunt about that because people spend money finding out the hard way. The silver layer on a plated piece is measured in microns. A whole canteen of Victorian electroplate might hold a gram or two of recoverable silver, and no refiner will process it for that. Buyers who advertise that they take plate are almost always paying for the base metal, if anything.
Plate can still be worth selling, just not to a metal buyer. Good quality plate from a known maker, complete sets in original canvas rolls, and decorative pieces in unusual forms all sell as second-hand tableware. The market is thin and the prices are modest, but they are real, and they are better than the nothing a refiner will offer. Sell it as what it is, to someone who wants to use it.
The exception worth knowing: Old Sheffield Plate, made by fusing sheets of silver to copper between roughly 1740 and 1840, is a genuinely collectable material and is not the same thing as Victorian electroplate. It is heavier, the silver layer is thicker, and worn edges show copper as a distinct line rather than a patch. Collectors pay for it. If a piece predates 1840 and shows that copper line, get an opinion before you write it off.
Common questions
My piece has no mark at all. Is it worthless?
Not necessarily. Plenty of genuine silver is unmarked, particularly older American pieces, small items where there was nowhere to stamp, and anything that has been heavily polished over a century. An absent mark means you have to test rather than read. Run the magnet, weight and ice tests, and if it still looks promising, acid is definitive.
Does tarnish mean it is real silver?
It is a hint, not proof. Silver tarnishes to a yellow, then brown, then blue-black film because it reacts with sulfur in the air. Plated pieces tarnish too, since the surface is silver. What tarnish does tell you is that the surface is not stainless steel or aluminum, neither of which behaves that way.
Should I polish everything before selling?
For scrap, no. It makes no difference to melt value and every polish removes a little metal. For anything you might sell as an object, be very careful: over-polishing destroys the patina collectors want and can soften hallmarks to the point of illegibility, which takes real money off the price.
What about silver-colored jewelry with no mark?
Assume it is not silver until tested. A great deal of costume jewelry is plated base metal or rhodium-plated brass. The magnet test rules out steel quickly, and acid settles the rest. Watch for pieces where only the clasp is marked, which sometimes means only the clasp is silver.
Is 800 silver worth less than sterling?
Per gram, yes, because it holds 80 percent silver against sterling's 92.5. It is still real silver with real melt value, and any competent buyer will price it correctly. Continental pieces are often beautifully made, so the object-versus-metal question applies just as much here.
Can I test silver with bleach?
You can, and you should not. Bleach tarnishes silver almost instantly, which is why the test appears to work, but it damages the surface permanently and tells you less than a magnet does. Use it on nothing you intend to sell.
My flatware is marked with a number like 90 or 100. What is that?
On continental plate, those numbers usually indicate the grams of silver used to plate a set quantity of pieces, not a purity. A 90 mark on European cutlery is a plating standard, not 90 percent silver. This trips people up constantly.
Do I need a jeweller's loupe?
It helps more than any other tool you can buy for the money. Hallmarks are small, frequently worn, and often in awkward places. A ten-times loupe turns an illegible smudge into a readable mark, which can be the difference between scrap and antique.