Before You Scrap the Silverware: One Word Means Real Silver

Under the china cabinet we opened last week there's a drawer. Felt lining, that particular smell, and fifty pieces of silverware nobody has polished since a wedding in another century. Everyone who lifts that drawer makes the same face and says the same word: heavy. This has to be worth something. In the silver drawer, heavy is the least reliable word in the room. Some of the lightest pieces in there are the real treasure. Some of the heaviest, most impressive pieces are the trap - barely any silver at all, engineered to feel expensive. The scrappers know exactly which is which. After today, so will you. ONE WORD, STAMPED SMALL Flip any piece and read the back of the handle. On American silver the word you're hunting is STERLING - sometimes 925. That stamp is a legal claim: 92.5% silver, all the way through. The honest cousins: European pieces speak in numbers - 800 is 80%, 830 is 83%, 900 is 90%. Genuinely old American pieces may say COIN (roughly 90%, from before sterling became the standard) or carry nothing but a maker's name. Old, unmarked, hand-feeling pieces are exactly like unmarked china: not trash. Ask pile. THE IMPOSTERS - EPNS - electroplated nickel silver. A whisper of silver over base metal. - PLATE, TRIPLE PLATE, QUADRUPLE PLATE, A1 - those words grade the thickness of the coating, which tells you how proud they were of how little silver is there. - GERMAN SILVER, NICKEL SILVER, ALPACA - alloy names. Copper, nickel and zinc, containing no silver whatsoever. The name is the costume. If the stamp has the word silver in it but not the word sterling, read it twice. Sterling is a claim. Plate is a coating. THE TRAP FROM THE TITLE The most impressive things in the drawer - candlesticks, big compotes, trophy-looking pieces - often carry the magic word sterling, and then, smaller, WEIGHTED or REINFORCED. That means a genuinely thin shell of real sterling formed over a core of pitch or cement. Typically only about 10-20% of what the scale reads is silver. Your table knives are the same story: sterling handles, but hollow ones, with stainless steel blades. The heaviest-feeling pieces in the drawer hold the least silver per pound of anything in it. And then the beautiful inversion: the humble teaspoon - light, thin, unimpressive - is solid sterling end to end. A drawer of those quiet spoons can outvalue the majestic candlesticks. Weight isn't worth. Solidity is, and solidity hides in the small stuff. CHAPTERS 0:00 The drawer under the cabinet 0:23 Heavy is the least reliable word 0:49 What today covers 1:20 One word: STERLING, sometimes 925 1:43 The honest cousins: 800, 830, 900, coin 2:15 Unmarked? Ask pile, not trash 2:24 The imposters: EPNS 2:36 Plate, triple plate, A1 3:14 German silver, nickel silver, alpaca 3:34 The drawer's rule 3:41 The trap: weighted and reinforced 4:11 What's actually inside a weighted piece 4:42 Knives: hollow handles, stainless blades 4:54 The inversion: the humble teaspoon 5:12 Weigh the solid pieces only 5:32 Grams x 0.925 x today's price 5:57 The pattern price 6:39 The never-scrap three 7:35 One honest downgrade: monograms 8:08 The drawer, in one pass 8:33 The silver pages 8:56 Next week: the walls This channel does not appraise items and does not provide financial, legal or tax advice. NEXT WEEK We look up from the drawers, at the walls: the signature in the corner of grandma's paintings, how to read it when a dusty frame is hiding real money, and the one kind of worthless picture that fools everyone at estate sales. #Silverware #SterlingSilver #EstateSale #Downsizing #Antiques #SilverPlate #EPNS #ScrapSilver #Flatware #DeathCleaning #EstateCleanout #SeniorLiving #Inheritance #HouseInventory #SilverStacking #Hallmarks #SellingSilver #ThriftFinds