A Recent Sale of a Silver Cutlery Set

People bring their silver sets to us for different reasons. Many people inherit their cutlery and then find they have no use for them. Some lucky people find sets at garage sales or auctions for a bargain and are looking to realize a profit. Some people end up with incomplete sets as, over the years, pieces have been lost and clients opt to sell rather than try to complete them. Other clients no longer entertain as much or simply have a more critical use for the cash that the sale of a set of silver cutlery can bring. 

In the case of the included photos, a client brought a full silver cutlery set in a wooden case to determine its value. While they may not seem commonplace these days, silver sets are items that Guardian International Gold purchases regularly. The process of its valuation is as follows: 

1. The first thing we do is to make sure they are silver. We do this by looking for certain hallmarks on the items.  

2. After determining that the set is sterling silver, we separate the forks and spoons to get their total weight. In this example, the weight of the forks and spoons was 2340 grams or about 69.5 oz.  

3. The next step is to separate the knives into small and large knives because only the handles are silver. In this example, there were 10 small knives and 16 large knives. The ounce for purchase then calculates to 2.5 oz for the small knives, because we buy them at a quarter of an oz (10 x .25) and 5.32 oz for the large knives because we buy them at a third of an oz (16 x .333).  

4. We can now add up the total oz of the complete set. 69.5 + 2.5 + 5.32 for a total of 77.32oz. We were paying CAD 29.67 per oz at the time of purchase, so the Client received $2,294.08.