How to sell inherited silver without regrets

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 coin tin, the tangle of broken chains: these are exactly the boxes where solid sterling and key-date coins hide. 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 by individual written quote, by weight and karat regardless of condition. Broken is fine. Dated styles are fine. Nothing gold is processed until the quote is approved.
• Coins are worth checking before anyone melts anything. Pre-1920 Canadian coins are sterling; 1920 to 1966 coins are 80% silver; rare dates in any era can be worth far more than melt. Coin lots are quoted in writing before anything is processed, and a clearly rare date is priced individually in the quote rather than melted; still, check the dates before shipping, or email photos to contact@silverplatecanada.ca first, if you want to keep any.
• 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: email the buyer photos first (ours is contact@silverplatecanada.ca), and a straight one will tell you plainly when a piece belongs at auction instead. If a buyer never mentions this possibility at all, that tells you something.

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, and anything without a published price (sterling silver, silver coins, gold, dental, bullion) gets a written quote that nothing moves without.
• Traceable payment: e-Transfer or cheque to the estate account, never cash in an envelope.

For larger estates, Canadian anti-money-laundering rules can require identity verification on big transactions. A legitimate buyer handles this routinely and remotely; a buyer who shrugs at it 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

1. Pull the keepsakes. Family first, arithmetic second.
2. Email photos of anything the family is unsure about to contact@silverplatecanada.ca. 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.
3. Box the rest, unpolished, and request your shipping label. Tell us roughly what is in the box so the label is sized right.
4. 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.
5. Any silver coins, gold, dental gold or bullion in the box waits for your written quote, and nothing in those categories moves until you approve it.