What your silver is actually worth
Nobody can tell you a price without knowing weight and purity, and anyone who quotes before asking is guessing or fishing. Here is the sum they are doing, so you can do it first.
The formula
- Troy ounces of metal
- times the purity
- times the spot price
- equals melt value
Every offer is a percentage of that number.
The arithmetic, in full
Silver is traded per troy ounce, which is 31.1035 grams, and is not the same as the ordinary ounce on a kitchen scale. Get that wrong and every number afterwards is out by about ten percent, always in the direction that flatters the buyer.
Take a canteen of sterling flatware weighing 2,000 grams gross. First subtract anything that is not silver: knife handles are usually filled with pitch or plaster and weighted with steel, so a "sterling" knife might hold a fraction of the silver its weight suggests. Suppose the true silver-bearing weight is 1,600 grams.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Convert to troy ounces | 1,600 grams divided by 31.1035 | 51.44 ozt |
| Apply sterling purity | 51.44 times 0.925 | 47.58 ozt fine |
| Multiply by spot price | 47.58 times a spot of 30.00 | 1,427.40 |
| A 70 percent offer | 1,427.40 times 0.70 | 999.18 |
| An 85 percent offer | 1,427.40 times 0.85 | 1,213.29 |
The gap is the whole point
Two honest, legitimate buyers looking at the same canteen can be 214 apart on that example, and neither is committing fraud. That spread is the entire reason to get more than one offer, and it is why knowing your melt value matters more than any negotiating tactic.
What eats into the number
Weighted handles
Knives, some candlesticks and many trophy cups are filled. The sterling is a thin shell over pitch, cement or a steel rod. Buyers know this and price accordingly, so weigh the knives separately and expect them to be valued as a fraction of their gross weight. A seller who has not separated them will find the whole lot discounted.
Solder, hinges and fittings
Teapot spouts, hinges, and applied decoration often involve lower-grade solder. On most pieces this is a rounding error, but on heavily constructed hollowware it is enough for a refiner to shade the assay.
Refining loss and assay
Turning mixed scrap into deliverable bullion costs money and loses a little metal. That cost sits inside the percentage you are offered, and it is a legitimate reason no buyer pays 100 percent of spot.
The buyer's spread
Whatever is left is the buyer's margin and their protection against the market moving before the metal is refined and sold. On a volatile week that spread widens, and your offer gets worse for reasons that have nothing to do with your silver.
Timing, and the thing dealers will not tell you
Spot moves every day, sometimes several percent. If you are selling a canteen worth 1,400, a five percent move is 70, which is more than most people would ever recover through haggling.
When the market is volatile, buyers widen their spreads to cover the risk of quoting a price on metal that will not reach them for a week. So volatility hurts you twice: the underlying price is unstable, and the percentage offered against it drops. In a calm market the same lot fetches a better percentage of a steadier number.
The practical advice, which no buyer has any incentive to give you: if silver has been swinging hard this week and there is no urgency, wait. Watch the spot price for a fortnight. Sell into a quiet stretch. There is no cleverness in this, only patience, and patience is worth real money in this market.
The opposite is also true and worth saying plainly. If you need the money now, take the best offer you can verify and do not agonise. The difference between a good week and a bad one is real but it is not life-changing, and the cost of dithering while a probate deadline approaches is worse.
When melt value is the wrong question
Melt value is a floor. Some pieces clear it comfortably as objects, and for those the whole calculation above is beside the point.
A complete matched canteen in its original oak case is worth more intact than melted, because replacing a missing serving spoon is hard and buyers of second-hand canteens pay for completeness. An early piece by a recorded maker is worth what a collector pays, which bears no relation to its weight. Anything Georgian, anything armorial, anything unusual in form - a wine funnel, a nutmeg grater, a caster set - belongs in front of a specialist before it goes near a refiner.
The test is simple. If a piece is old, signed, complete, or strange, get an opinion first. Melting is irreversible, and a refiner has no obligation to tell you that the thing in their hand is worth five times what they are about to pay for it.
If you have established what you have and what it is worth, the last question is who to sell it to. The buyer comparison covers what each kind of buyer actually pays and how to test an offer. If you are still unsure what you are holding, go back to the identification guide first, because purity is the input that everything here depends on.
Common questions
What is a fair percentage of melt value?
For clean, identifiable sterling scrap in reasonable quantity, competitive mail-in buyers and refiners generally sit in the high seventies to high eighties. Local shops and pawnbrokers are usually lower because their costs and their risk are different. Below about seventy percent on straightforward sterling, ask why before you accept.
Where do I find the spot price?
It is published continuously and free on any financial data site. Use the live figure on the day you are quoted, not a number you remember from last month, because the whole calculation hangs on it.
Do I need an accurate scale?
A digital scale reading to a tenth of a gram is enough and costs very little. Weigh in grams and convert, rather than trusting a scale's own troy ounce mode, which is often wrong on cheap units.
Does the buyer weigh it in front of me?
A good one will, or will send you photographs of the scale for a mail-in lot. If a buyer will not show you the weight they are working from, that alone is a reason to go elsewhere.
Why did two buyers quote such different weights?
Usually because one deducted weighted knife handles and the other quoted gross before deducting later. Always ask whether a quote is on gross or on estimated silver-bearing weight, since the two are not comparable.
Is silver taxed when I sell it?
That depends entirely on where you live, what you sold, and what you paid for it. Rules differ by country and change, and a personal-possessions exemption may or may not apply. This site does not give tax advice; ask an accountant before a large sale.
Should I sell everything at once?
Usually yes for scrap, because quantity improves the percentage you are offered and one shipment costs less than three. Split the lot only when part of it might have value as objects, in which case those pieces go to a different buyer entirely.
Typical silver content by item
These are working figures for estimating before you weigh, not a substitute for a scale. Actual weights vary enormously between makers, patterns and periods, and a heavy Victorian pattern can be double a light modern one. Use them to sanity-check a quote, not to price a lot.
| Item | Typical gross weight | Usable silver |
|---|---|---|
| Sterling teaspoon | 20 to 30 grams | Nearly all |
| Sterling tablespoon or serving spoon | 50 to 90 grams | Nearly all |
| Sterling dinner fork | 50 to 70 grams | Nearly all |
| Sterling-handled knife | 60 to 90 grams | Often under a third |
| Sterling candlestick, weighted | 300 to 700 grams | Often under a quarter |
| Sterling teapot | 400 to 900 grams | Nearly all |
| Sterling salver or tray | 500 to 2,000 grams | Nearly all |
| Sterling napkin ring | 10 to 25 grams | Nearly all |
Weighted pieces are where estimates go wrong
Knives, candlesticks and some trophy cups look like the heaviest things in the box and are frequently the least valuable by weight. A pair of candlesticks weighing 1,200 grams gross might carry 250 grams of silver, with the rest being plaster and a steel rod. If a quote seems oddly low on a heavy lot, this is almost always why, and it is a legitimate reason rather than a trick.
Getting a quote that means something
A quote is only useful if you know what it is a quote for. Before you accept any number, establish four things, and any legitimate buyer will answer all four without hesitation.
What weight are you working from? Gross, or silver-bearing after deducting weighted handles? The two numbers can differ by a third on a mixed canteen, so comparing a gross quote against a net one tells you nothing.
What purity are you assuming? If a lot mixes sterling with 800 continental and a few plated strays, a single blended figure hides a lot. Ask them to separate it, or separate it yourself before sending.
What spot price is this based on, and when does it expire? Serious buyers lock a price for a defined window, often 24 to 72 hours from when the metal arrives. A quote with no reference price and no expiry is not a quote, it is a conversation starter.
What happens if I decline? The answer should be that they return everything at their cost, promptly, insured. If return shipping is charged to you, or if declining is made awkward, that friction is the product. Walk away.
Write the answers down for each buyer you approach. Four columns and three rows will tell you more than a week of reading reviews, because it converts marketing into numbers you can line up side by side.