Selling Scrap Sterling Silver: Beginner Questions

[MilitariaCollector]

I like to go to garage sales and occasionally I’ll come across small lots of random jewelry that are inexpensive. These often have sterling silver pieces among them. I know some of the nicer sterling jewelry is worth more as is, while lower quality pieces may be best to scrap. I have an acquaintance who has offered to buy the lower quality scrap sterling silver jewelry for 70% spot value. I believe you need some kind of scrap license to deal directly with a refinery (which I don’t have), and I personally don’t know anyone else who buys scrap gold and silver. Is 70% fair? Would I be offered more if I went to a few different coin shops/scrap places? Do these places typically tell you what percent of spot that they pay, or do they just weigh it and throw a price at you in the hopes that you don’t know any better?

 

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[XtreasureX]

I think you could do better than 70% at a recycling shop. However, with jewelry, depending on the size of the pieces you may get less. A shop has to check each piece individually and if you have a bunch of small earrings and beads it can be time consuming to test. Scrap sterling is bought by the gram so you have to do some math to convert the price to ozt. Shop around for the best deal but ask what each person pays in cents per gram.

 

[gunsil]

70% is great if it is jewelry that is made by soldering components since it will no longer assay as sterling due to solder content. All chains have solder. I make jewelry and it is hard to sell scrap with solder back to my supplier. Clean scrap or cast items gets good prices as it can be re-used as is while soldered scrap has to be re-refined and alloyed back to sterling. Sterling with soldered parts cannot be reused as is since the solder will cause pits in any items cast from it or sheet and wire made from it.

 

[cyberdan]

I guess 70% is OK, just depends on how much you have and what you paid. When I sell anything to my refinery, depending on qty smaller lots get a 90% payout and larger get 95%. ARA in Dallas only requires that you have a business license. No special type just a business license. Are you ex-GI? in my town any veteran gets a free business license. When they ask what kind of business do not mention gold/silver. Just "buy and sell used things" or something like that.

When I used to hit 40-50 yardsales every saturday and I saw silver things I wanted I would pick up all I could find and make up a price that I wanted to pay. Then I would pick up 3-4 more real nice pieces of costume jewelry. I would take all to the seller and offer my price. Sometimes they accepted sometimes they didn't. If they didn't I would go through what I had and pick out those 3-4 extras and ask "if I put these back will you take my offer?" That worked a lot too. We were both happy.