How to find silver at flea markets, thrift stores, and antique shops.

What to look for

• Sterling flatware: forks, spoons, and serving pieces marked STERLING or 925, often sold one at a time or mixed into a bin of plated silverware.
• Coin silver spoons: older American spoons marked COIN, about 90% silver.
• Silver jewelry: chains, bracelets, and rings marked 925, including Mexican pieces, which are often heavy.
• Old coins: jars and rolls of change can hold dimes, quarters, and half dollars dated 1964 and earlier. See which coins are silver.
• Small sterling items: napkin rings, baby cups, compacts, and frames. Check whether a frame or box has a wood or cardboard back, which is most of its weight.

What to pass by

• Silver plate: marked EP, EPNS, A1, "silver plate", or "quadruple plate". It has almost no silver. See is silver plate worth anything?
• "Nickel silver", "German silver", and "alpaca": no silver at all.
• Weighted pieces: sterling candlesticks and some bowls are thin silver filled with cement or pitch, and hollow-handled knives have steel blades. Their silver is a small part of their weight.

Bring a few tools

• A loupe or magnifier, to read worn marks.
• A strong magnet: silver isn't magnetic, so a piece the magnet grabs isn't solid silver. Passing doesn't prove it's silver.
• A small pocket scale that reads grams, to price by weight on the spot.

Ask before testing anything, and never scratch or use acid on a piece you haven't bought. See how to test silver.

Price it by weight

For scrap, sterling is worth its silver: 92.5% of its weight. We pay 80% of the silver value for sterling flatware and jewelry, which is $1.18 per gram of sterling today, or $36.60 per troy ounce. A sterling fork of about 40 grams comes to $47.07. Pieces by well-known silversmiths, and fine antiques, can be worth more to collectors than their silver.

Scrap prices are per gram of metal after melting, not per gram of what you send. Stones are removed, and dirt, glue, springs, and anything else that isn't gold or silver burn off or separate out, so the weight paid is usually less than your scale shows.

Our minimum for scrap sterling is 1 kilo, about 2.2 pounds, so most finds are worth saving up and selling together.

Silver guides: Is my silver real? · Sterling marks · Silver stamps · Is my silverware silver? · Sterling flatware · Scrap silver price · All guides

We pay more for silver than pawn shops and jewelers, at a published percentage of the Kitco bid. The best place to sell silver