Pick up a sterling dinner knife from an inherited flatware set. Then pick up a sterling tablespoon from the same set. The knife feels heavier. The spoon is worth more.
That surprises almost everyone who brings a silver service across the counter, and it's the single biggest reason people leave disappointed when they were expecting a windfall. It isn't a trick and nobody was cheated. It's just how flatware has been built for well over a century, and once you know it you can look at a set and estimate roughly where the value actually sits.
A sterling knife is mostly not silver
A sterling knife handle is a thin shell of silver formed into shape and then filled — traditionally with cement or pitch, more recently with resin. The blade itself is stainless steel, because solid silver is far too soft to hold an edge. So what you're holding is a hollow silver skin around a filler core, with a steel blade stuck in the end.
A tablespoon, by contrast, is usually struck from solid sterling all the way through. Less heft in the hand, considerably more silver in the piece.
This is why nobody who buys precious metal for a living quotes a flatware set off its total weight. The set has to be sorted first.
The same trick lives in the serving pieces
Look at the base of a sterling candlestick, a compote, or a trophy cup and you'll often find the word WEIGHTED or REINFORCED stamped into it. That's the maker telling you the truth up front: sterling shell, plaster or pitch core. A pair of weighted candlesticks can feel substantial and contain a surprisingly modest amount of recoverable silver.
Weighted pieces are still real sterling. There's just much less of it than the object's size and weight suggest.
Sterling or silverplate? Read the mark
This is the distinction that actually decides whether a set is worth anything as metal, and the two look nearly identical on a table.
Sterling is 92.5% silver and will say so: STERLING or 925. Coin silver is older American work at roughly 90%, sometimes marked COIN or PURE COIN — genuine silver, slightly lower fineness.
Silverplate is a microscopically thin layer of silver over a base metal, and it has essentially no recoverable metal value no matter how much the set weighs. Marks that indicate plate rather than solid silver include:
- EPNS (electroplated nickel silver)
- Silver on copper
- A1, AA, or similar quality grades
- Familiar names like 1847 Rogers Bros, Wm Rogers, and Community — well-made, collectible in their own right, but plated
The "1847" on a Rogers Bros piece is the founding year of the company, not a date on your set and not a fineness. That one catches people constantly.
What this means when you walk in with a chest
A full service for twelve looks enormous sitting open on the counter. But a large share of what you're seeing is knives and weighted serving pieces, and those carry far less silver than their bulk implies. The value tends to concentrate in the plainest, least impressive-looking items in the box: the spoons and forks nobody ever displayed.
Solid sterling gets handled the way solid gold does — sorted, tested, and weighed. Our own sterling stock is priced the same way, whether it's a 13.7-gram chain or a 59-gram Miami Cuban bracelet: the metal is the metal, and the scale settles it.
One thing worth doing before anyone melts anything
Check the pattern first.
Sterling flatware patterns have a collector and replacement market of their own, and a complete or near-complete set in a sought-after pattern can be worth more intact than it is as metal. Discontinued patterns in particular get hunted by people trying to complete a service they inherited themselves.
The pattern name is usually stamped on the back of the handle. It costs you nothing to look it up before making an irreversible decision, and melting a desirable complete set is the one move in this whole process you can't undo. We would rather tell you that than have you find out afterward.
If you want a straight answer on what you have, bring it in and we'll sort and test it in front of you — including the pieces that turn out to be plate.
DD Pawn Loans, 2751 W Atlantic Blvd, Pompano Beach, serving Fort Lauderdale, Deerfield Beach, Coral Springs and Broward County. Call (561) 774-9292. Open Monday–Thursday 10am–7pm, Friday 9am–8pm, Saturday 10am–7pm. Closed Sunday. More on selling silver in Broward County.