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Someone asked about silverware knifes elsewhere. It dawned on me, oh my, I didn’t say anything when the new category came out.

Let’s start with some basics before I answer the original question.

First you need to know what you have, and if it’s silver or silver plated. Of silver cased, which was a thing for a while.
Does it say 850 or 925? That tells you everything except fraud silver. Past that: the fastest way to know for sure is to look up the piece on replacements dot com.
First you can find out if it’s silver or plate. Second, they may buy it from you. Higher than melt rate. They buy both plated and solid gold and silver flatware. Reselling it to other buyers. They buy stainless flatware as well.

If you can’t find it on that website, try a reverse image search of the pattern end of the item, that is the stem. You want to be sure you don’t sell silver at plate rate I’m sure Chris will tell you if you do! But I’m not sure if they will pay you that value or send it back.

The word sterling means nothing. It’s not a legal term. It’s part of many company and product names. It’s also a general word used in many other English and ESL countries, similar to the British exclamation brilliant. Means shiny, awesome, great, etc.
look for three numbers. 999, 925, 900, 880, 850, 550 etc.
national law covers such use on metals in more than 160 countries. There’s fakes (acid testing and xrf are still used despite markings), from eg China, Congo, Iran, etc, but it’s the go to starting point for most to not look further.

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About those knifes.

The vast majority of knives are steel cutting metal. You need to go WAY back to get actual silver in the head of the knife and even then it’s an alloy.

If it’s older than 1940, the handle is almost always weighted with another material. The only way to know is to xrf scan or cut the handle open.

From 1818-1940 about half of silver flatware is weighted for knives. But that era is likely worth more as a piece than melt value, so no need to cut it, just ebay it.

What’s in the handle? Good question. It depends on the year and I won’t cover it all; I’d be typing this for the next week and I’m a fast typer.
Acrylic, epoxy, carbon, concrete (in its various names and forms), wood, glass, lead, and on, and on… … … !

Here’s why the price doesn’t match up, beyond the obvious weight difference of steel and filler.
Someone has to break the handle off and open.
How that is down depends on the buyer. One business I frequent has a heavy mallet and simply bashes them open at the hidden seam. I’ve heard that’s the most common method.
But you lose value in the labour cost of getting the silver free.

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Thanks for the info. I looked all over on every piece and couldn’t find any numbers. The only thing I found was the name in the included pic. I searched it and it comes back as a legitimate producer of silver and silver plated items. I included a pic of one of the knives broken half that looks like a thick plating around a non-magnetic aluminum alloy of some sort.

Well that’s quite a mixed set.

The salad fork (pronged spoon) is probably nickel plate.
Comes up as one of the queen sets but I can’t tell which one.

If you wanted to post photos of each design separately my app lets me do a reverse image search.
Find out what each set is, what it’s made of, and for the knives, what’s inside.

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Definitely will later this afternoon. Thanks!

Here’s are the pics. Thanks for the help!

Hold on I’ll try.
Though I think the background table cover ma be too close in colour for the scanner
I’ll let you know what happens shortly

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In order
Skipped for now (hard to do this type)

Grape (Silverplate Hollowware) cake server

Olde Copenhagen Pie Cutter and you have 2 matching set below
Olde Copenhagen Pie server with silverplate blade

Godinger Standards silverplate

See above olde

See above standards

Last one I can’t find. Try a different background

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