A stamp on metal is a claim. Sterling, 925, 14k, 18k, GF, RGP, EPNS, and the word plate are different claims, and the price follows the claim only after you have read the whole stamp. The usual thrift mistake is to see a flash of yellow or a shine on a spoon and pay for the expensive version of that shine. The usual online mistake is to crop the photograph so the letters GF fall outside the frame. This note is the reading. The flatware guide, the karat jewelry guide, and the gold-filled guide are the objects the reading applies to.
Nothing here is a melt price. Metal prices move, buyers take a cut, and a spoon with a pattern can be worth more or less than a buyer’s melt number. Look up the buyer and the pattern when you are actually selling. Do not take a number from a comment and treat it as a quote.
Sterling, in one sentence
Sterling is 92.5 percent silver. On flatware and jewelry the mark is the word STERLING or the number 925, struck into the metal. A lion, a maker’s mark, and a date letter belong to other countries’ hallmark systems. Those systems are real, and they are specific. If you cannot read the hallmark, do not assign a city and a year from a blurry lion. Photograph it and look it up, or describe it as a hallmark you have not identified. A wrong city is a false listing. An unidentified hallmark is an honest one.
“Silver” alone is not sterling. “A1,” “triple,” and “quadruple plate” are plate language. German silver is a nickel alloy. EPNS is electroplate. A piece can be old, heavy, and handsome and still be plate. Plate has a market as plate, usually a thin one, unless the object is a desirable form. Do not smuggle it into a sterling lot. Buyers return mixed lots, and you pay the postage twice. Sort with light and a loupe, one piece at a time, at the estate sale before the box is “all sterling” because one spoon was.
Weighted knives and the weight you must not use
A sterling fork is solid. A sterling knife is often a weighted handle: a shell of sterling over a filler, with a stainless blade, marked weighted or obvious once you know the feel. You can weigh the forks. You should not add the knife’s whole weight to a silver-weight calculation and call it silver. The flatware page walks through that. A monogram is an engraving, not a hallmark. It removes some buyers. Say it is there. Polishing it off thins the handle. Tarnish is not damage. Leave it until you can see the mark, then decide.
Pattern names matter more than melt for a living pattern. Search the maker and the pattern and the piece. A teaspoon and a serving spoon do not share a price. A service with missing pieces is not a service. Count them. The thrift box is almost always a mix of plate and sterling and stainless. The mix is the job.
Karat stamps
Karat gold is marked 10k, 14k, 18k, 22k, 24k, or with the European fineness numbers 417, 585, 750, 916, 999. The stamp sits on a clasp, inside a ring, on a post. Read every part. A 14k clasp on a plated chain is a common disappointment, and it is a true description only if you mention both. A stamp can be worn smooth. Unmarked is not a synonym for fake, and it is not a synonym for 14k. If you cannot read it, you do not pay a karat price. The jewelry guide is the rest of that decision, including stones you must not name as diamonds because a tag did.
A magnet is a screen. Steel sticks. Gold does not. Plenty of things that do not stick are brass or plate. The magnet did not make them 14k. Acid tests and electronic testers can scar a piece or mislead you. If you do not already know how, do not practice on the only clasp in the tray.
Gold-filled, the stamp people crop
Gold-filled is a bonded layer of karat gold that is a stated fraction of the item’s weight. The mark looks like 1/20 12k GF or 1/10 14k GF, or it says gold filled or rolled gold. The fraction is the point. A listing that shows only the 14k is a listing that has removed the truth. RGP, gold plate, and GP are the thinner family. They wear through at the edges and show the base. Gold-filled wears through too, later, and when it does you can see brass. That is the end of the gold description.
Do not multiply the whole weight of a GF chain by a karat price. The stamp is telling you not to. Sell it as gold-filled jewelry if it is bright and marked, which the gold-filled guide covers, or leave it. Scraping the layer off is how you make a mess, not a profit. Watch cases from the same era are often gold-filled and marked as such. The movement is a separate object. A GF case does not grade the watch. Box and papers is a different problem, for a different kind of value, and it does not turn a filled case into a solid one.
Plate, and why it still shines
Silver plate was made to shine and to wear. The shine is the plating. When it wears, you see the base at the high points, a different color. That wear is honest. Replating is a service with a cost, and a replated piece is replated. Old plate in a desirable pattern can be worth more than scrap, which is almost nothing, because someone wants the form. Most plate flatware is not that pattern. It is a box of spoons. Best items to flip does not include a random box of plate. It includes a marked sterling piece you can name.
Costume jewelry sits beside this and is not trying to be gold. A brooch with a maker’s mark on the back is a search. A sparkle with no mark is a sparkle. Do not upgrade glass to a gemstone because the color is red. The mark on the back is the whole game, the same as the mark on the spoon.
In the aisle
Use a light. Read the whole stamp into your notes or into a photo before you pay a metal price. If the stamp is partial, the price has to be a partial-knowledge price. Sort plate out of sterling before you leave the sale, not after you have listed the lot. Weigh solid spoons if you are going to talk about weight, and say the unit. Do not weigh weighted knives into that number.
Then look up the pattern or the jewel, not only a melt figure. Pricing still applies. A buyer of a pattern pays a pattern price. A melt buyer pays a melt price. If you do not know which one you are talking to, you will take the worse number and call it the market. Fees come off either way.
Worth can read STERLING or 14k GF when the stamp is sharp and complete in the frame. It cannot weigh the box, and it cannot repair a crop that cut the fraction off. Photograph the entire mark. Then decide whether the object is the metal, the pattern, or a shine you should put back on the table.