Today, I bought the following tea service set at a garage sale:
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I paid $25 for it. The seller told me that it was made of solid sterling silver, bt I did not believe him (and hence got my price instead of asking price). I bought it purely because it was looked good and I assumed it was made from some cheap metal that was silver plated.
Upon getting home however, I tried to make some deep scratches in an unconspicuous place in one piece, and to my surprise, despite making a deep scratch, the metal beneath was still relatively soft and silvery looking. The stamp on the service pieces refers to some silversmith.
The set weight about 7 lbs 6 oz, according to my postal scale.
I have no intention of selling the set as it would look great in our house.
I have two questions:
How can I check if it is really silver
How can I clean the dark silver safely and effectively.
Your simple test may or may not tell you anything. Often the base metal under silver plate is the same color as silver, so when the silver wears away you can't really tell. Sterling silver is an alloy commonly used for such things, along with silver plate. It would be highly unlikely your items are made of pure silver. Sterling is a composition of 92.5% silver,
7.5% copper. Scandinavian countries used different alloys of silver and copper, some as low as 70% silver. The marks on your pieces should tell you what they are made of. Look for a number like 925, which would be sterling, 900, which would be "coin" silver, Also look for hallmarks, such as a lion. Tell us what you see marked on the bottom of your pieces and we may be able to tell you what you bought.
If you are interested in a non-destructive test for silver, there is a solution that will react blood red when applied to silver, a mixture of distilled water, nitric acid and potassium dichromate. Nitric acid alone will also react, leaving a cream colored surface on the item being tested if it is silver, but a green reaction if you test a scratch through a plated item. None of this is difficult, but if you haven't seen the tests done before you may not understand what you are seeing when doing the tests. If you can provide more information I may be able to tell you more. .
Whatever you do, don't use tarn-x. It destroys the value of real silver, if by any chance that was what you actually bought. Sterling acquires a patina by being rubbed with normal silver cleaner over many years, it's a pain in the ass to do but it's the only thing that will really preserve the value of good silver.
If it's plate it's far less important, as most plate has very little monetary value, and the silver is gradually removed with polish.
For what it's worth, unless it's marked sterling the odds are incredibly high it's plate. Are there any marks at all?
First, there are lots of base metals they put electroplate over, so merely not seeing copper when you scratch it is no big deal. The base metals are often soft. You sometimes see electroplate over German Silver, which isn't really silver at all, it's a soft, easily cast alloy with a silvery color.
Can you post a link to a photo of the mark? If it says E.P. followed by anything it's electroplate. The same thing with quadruple plate or Sheffield plate. If it was made in the US, it would pretty much either say Sterling, or if it's fairly old it might say CS or coin silver. The name of a silver company doesn't mean it's silver, many companies sold both sterling and plate.
Solid sterling silver is marked as such and plated is also marked as such. There are very rigid standards for marking such materials and violations are often harshly dealt with to the manufacturers. That doesn't mean that somebody can't mark the parts with the wrong marks but they first have to get rid of the proper marks. I'd do a google to see what the proper marks are as well as the manufacturer that made the set.
-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!
At least I paid $25 for the set, and it looks great after cleaning. I figure that it is worth at least $25. And By The Way, I did not believe the sellers when I was buying. I started believing them after I did some testing.
If you like it, that's all that really matters. Retail value is meaningless if you like something and intend to keep it. How well something would sell only comes into play if you bought it to resell it.
I buy lots of stuff that I could never resell for what I paid for it. I buy it because I like it, what someone else would pay for it is irrelevant.
I have some Rogers plate, that was my mothers. If it doesn't say "sterling" on it, it's plate. Some times Sterling will have a decimalised purity number instead.
how about ebay? I generally sell stuff on ebay, mostly military surplus. I do not plan to sell this service on ebay because I like it, but I am curious as to how much it can fetch.
I looked on eBay, and the vast majority of Rogers sets sold for around $25-30. As for the the $300 in an antique shop estimate, when I had booths in antique malls in the Dallas, Texas area, Rogers teapots and coffee pots generally went for around $20 or so in antique malls, and could be bought at auction for under $10 each. The set you've got wouldn't bring more than $75 in most shops in my area, and generally wouldn't be found at all except in antique malls and fairly low end shops, as modern plate doesn't sell particularly well. They're common as dirt, because damn near everyone got one as a wedding present, and no one ever used them.
That being said, it really doesn't matter. You bought it because you liked it, you couldn't buy it new for anywhere near what you paid for it, and after paying shipping fees you couldn't buy it on eBay for what you paid for it. Forget about what it's worth, and enjoy it.
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