Adam Zimmerman shows how to value sterling silver flatware and household pieces. Many dinner knives have stainless-steel blades and weighted handles filled with wax or cement, so they don't count as solid sterling. Most unmarked flatware is worth only its melt value unless it's from makers like Tiffany or Georg Jensen.
Today we're going to talk about sterling flatware. I have a lot of clients always asking me about sterling flatware sets, how to figure out the value, and basically how it works. So this is an example of a 5-piece place setting. So what that means is there's 5 pieces for each person sitting down at that dinner meal. So when it says service for 12, you have 12 times 5, that's a 60-piece sterling flatware set. So once again, that's a 60-piece sterling flatware set. So what you have in that 5-piece place setting is A salad fork, a dinner fork, a dinner knife, a soup spoon, and a teaspoon. And another important thing that clients always ask me regarding the sterling flatware sets is, how much is it worth? What can I get for it? And things like that. They always think that all these pieces are silver, so it's got to be worth money. However, there's a couple things you need to know. First of all, the knife has a stainless steel blade and it's weighted. So that means that you cannot include the knife when you weigh the set. So if you put these items on the scale and you weigh this, then you can get the total amount of sterling by troy ounces. However, you never put the knife on it. So when you're going to sell this set, you're never going to see them put the knife on it because it doesn't make sense. You have stainless steel, and then you have sterling with wax or cement in here because it's weighted. And that's what that means. And you'll literally see that it's going to say weighted handle, and that's what that means. Another question I get very often about the sterling flatware is, can I get more than the silver value for it? And what I would usually say is, your kids don't want it, it's not going to be saleable, it's worth the silver amount. There's always exceptions. If it's a big name like George Jensen, Tiffany, Buccellati, something like that, of course there's going to be a premium. But if it's not a major name, it's going to be the value of the metal. Price is very high right now, so it's going to add up to a decent amount. But to get more than the amount of sterling, I think, would be very difficult. Another example of weighted is going to be a knife. A lot of times with the flatware sets, the dinner knives are not Solid sterling. They have a stainless steel blade, and on top of the stainless steel blade, they also have a weighted handle. Again, this weighted handle is used because you're trying to—it feels better in your hands. Again, this knife is used because it feels better in your hands with the extra weight at the end. So the reason that they put weight in these—it's not because they wanted to be cheap or they wanted to save money. They put the weighted stuff in there—the wax—because they didn't want these candlesticks to fall over. They didn't want the salt. And pepper to spill. So in order for that to not happen, the vases, sometimes the weighted vases, they put wax or cement or something inside there to keep it weighted. So I have a lot of clients that always ask me about the candlesticks. So they have these candlesticks, they think they have a lot of money, they send me pictures and they say, come on over, I want to sell these because they're super heavy. The problem is When it comes to candlesticks, candelabras, compotes, also sometimes salt and pepper shakers, these items are weighted. So what that means is they have cement or wax or something inside them. So if you take this candlestick and you put it on the scale, and let's say it says 6 ounces, sounds good, except this is weighted. Show you what that means. This is what's inside. Now, this is usually— it's usually resin or wax, or it could be cement, but all of these have that inside. So you can't put it on the scale because it's not going to be worth it. And if you saw this, you'd see that this is paper thin. So it's worth a little bit of money, But it's not going to be worth anywhere as near as if it was solid sterling rather than weighted. In order to figure out if it is weighted, of course, sometimes you could tell just because it feels very bottom-heavy, but the other thing is you need to look at the mark underneath, and it's going to say weighted sterling. Usually says something like that, or cement-filled. When you see that, that's how you know it's going to be a weighted piece. Um, another thing that you could also try to figure out is if it's weighted at the bottom, is it going to be weighted in the middle as well? In general, these pieces are not worth as much because it's not solid sterling. Please subscribe so you don't miss any future videos.
