How to sell inherited silver without regrets
A practical, unhurried guide for heirs and executors. The metal is not going anywhere. The goal is to do this once, do it right, and have a paper trail everyone in the family can trust.
Start with the only rule that matters
Keep the pieces with stories. No payout replaces the christening mug with the dented rim or the ring your mother actually wore. Before anything is weighed or quoted, walk the family through the pieces and pull out what anyone genuinely wants. Everything after this step is just arithmetic; this step is the one you cannot undo.
A useful test: if a piece would sit unseen in a drawer for the next twenty years, it is metal. If it would sit on a shelf and be looked at, it is memory. Sell metal, keep memory.
Do not polish, sort, or tidy up the lot
Three well-meaning mistakes cost heirs real money every week:
- Polishing. Polishing strips silver every time, and on antique pieces it can destroy the patina collectors pay for. Tarnish does not reduce value. Leave it black.
- Pre-sorting by guesswork. Families reliably mis-sort sterling into the plate pile and vice versa, because plate was designed to look like sterling. Read the sterling vs silverplate guide if you enjoy the detective work, but do not throw anything out on a kitchen-table verdict.
- Tossing the "worthless" box. The silverplate chest, the tangle of broken chains: these are exactly the boxes where solid sterling hides. The donation bin does not check. We do, on camera, piece by piece.
Understand what each thing is worth, roughly
- Sterling flatware and holloware is the sleeper. A full flatware set can be worth thousands of dollars at melt, and published payout rates vary enormously between buyers. Get any offer in writing before you commit. We quote sterling in writing before anything is processed, and nothing is melted until you accept: ask us on your label request and we will tell you what your set is worth.
- Gold jewellery is bought at a published price by the gram for its karat, regardless of condition. Broken is fine. Dated styles are fine.
- Silverplate has modest per-pound recycling value. Modest is not zero: details in what is silverplate worth.
- Complete sets, signed pieces and unusual antiques can be worth more whole than melted. This check has to happen before you ship, with an antique dealer or an auction house: a metal buyer, ours included, pays for the metal only and melts everything it buys.
Executors: protect yourself with paper
If you are selling as an executor, you owe the estate documentation, and co-heirs sometimes ask hard questions months later. A clean process looks like this:
- An itemized receipt: every category listed with its weight, rate and dollar amount. One document for the estate file, checkable against the buyer's published rates.
- Video handling: parcels opened and processed on camera, so "what happened to the ladle" always has an answer.
- Published prices, no phone-quote drift: the prices are on the site before you ship, including gold, and anything not on the list gets a written quote that nothing moves without.
- Traceable payment: Interac e-Transfer with an itemized receipt, so every dollar is on the estate’s record.
Expect a legitimate buyer to ask for photo ID. We ask every seller for it as part of our anti-money-laundering (FINTRAC) compliance program, and a photo of the front of your driver's licence, emailed to us, is enough. A buyer who shrugs at identity checks is a red flag. The full executor picture, including trade terms for estate professionals, is on the for executors page.
The practical path, start to finish
- Pull the keepsakes. Family first, arithmetic second.
- Email photos of anything the family is unsure about to [email protected]. An honest buyer will tell you what to keep out of the box. Items can be returned if you change your mind, but the return trip is at your shipping cost.
- Box the rest, unpolished, and request your shipping label. Tell us roughly what is in the box so the label is sized right.
- Ship tracked (add insurance at the counter if you wish), then read your itemized receipt line by line against the published rates. Ask questions; the video exists.
- Anything not on the price list waits for your written quote, and nothing in it moves until you approve it.
No deadlines, ever. Metal prices move, but the metal keeps. Grief has its own schedule, and a packed box can sit on a shelf for months before you feel ready. Your label is good for 30 days. If it runs out, just ask and we'll send a new one.