Half Kilogram Of Silver For Under $3

[UnderMiner]

Thrift store find of the month! $2.99 for a huge 500 gram Sterling Silver serving tray. Made by Nuran, a Turkish silver company. Been diversifying the hunt lately and it's been paying off quite well. Staff must have missed the 925 stamp because it was on the top part of the rim, not on the bottom as usual.

 

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[SusanMN]

That is just excellent! I am a big thrift store hunter and I always look at potential silver pieces. But I guess I should be looking at them much closer. Congrats on the great find.

 

[Nitric]

Cool find

When I was in Ohio visiting, they have a goodwill outlet type place where they bring stuff out in bins then change them on the hour throughout the day.

I was shocked to find hallmarked silver in the bins. I found 4 serving spoons that way. I also think I found butter knifes but threw them back. I should have grabbed them and peeled the silver off the stainless blades but wasn't thinking straight. And for others that don't know...Some knife handles are hollow silver, with a stainless insert for the knife. Not all of them are marked and do add up if you want to spend the time to "peel" and pound the plaster or whatever is in there out.

Cool find and it's still out there!!!

 

[A2coins]

That a good many years worth of silver coins hundreds of hours detecting in one swoop nice

 

[adit]

Great find .

 

[Plumbata]

Beautiful fat chunk of booty, arrrr!

It's always a good idea to carefully look-over potential silver items, I've noticed that the less common silver alloys like the German or Scandinavian standards are sometimes marked in strange places and are missed by those looking for a blatant "STERLING" mark in the bottom center of pieces. I know you're keyed into that and have done well but some pirates here still have more to learn.

I'm sure you haven't posted all your silver finds but just the ones I recall seeing here amount to a good pile of loot. Do you hoard it all (as I do), or do you sell unimportant items to refiners?

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Congratualtions on the nice find!

 

[Hawks88]

Good eye for silver and the price was right. Congrats

 

[UnderMiner]

Beautiful fat chunk of booty, arrrr!

It's always a good idea to carefully look-over potential silver items, I've noticed that the less common silver alloys like the German or Scandinavian standards are sometimes marked in strange places and are missed by those looking for a blatant "STERLING" mark in the bottom center of pieces. I know you're keyed into that and have done well but some pirates here still have more to learn.

I'm sure you haven't posted all your silver finds but just the ones I recall seeing here amount to a good pile of loot. Do you hoard it all (as I do), or do you sell unimportant items to refiners?

I very rarely, if ever sell treasure that is made of precious metal, but I sell alot of the antiques that I find, especially large expensive antiques like guitars, tools, bikes, etc.

As for silver I have found silver from the following nations that are NOT marked 'Sterling' but are an alloy of silver nonetheless: German 800 silver (80%), Russian 84 Zolotniki silver (87.5%), Iranian ۸۴ silver (87.5%, they copied Russian standards), Egyptian 900 silver (90%), Turkish 900 silver (90%), German 12 Loth silver (75%), Polish 3rd Standard silver (80%), Austrian 13 Loth silver (81.3%), Italian 800 silver (80%), English Britannia silver (95.84%), American Coin silver (90%), Swedish 83% alloy, French 1st Alloy (95%), Czech Bohemian 800 standard (80%), varying Indian silver alloys especially from Rajasthan (as low as 75% as high as 99%), Bombay .999 Silver alloy (99%+), and probably more, this is why I am writing a book on this stuff. Very fun to research silver and the history behind it.

 

[creskol]

WW .. That's fantastic!

 

[UnderMiner]

I very rarely, if ever sell treasure that is made of precious metal, but I sell alot of the antiques that I find, especially large expensive antiques like guitars, tools, bikes, etc.

As for silver I have found silver from the following nations that are NOT marked 'Sterling' but are an alloy of silver nonetheless: German 800 silver (80%), Russian 84 Zolotniki silver (87.5%), Iranian ۸۴ silver (87.5%, they copied Russian standards), Egyptian 900 silver (90%), Turkish 900 silver (90%), German 12 Loth silver (75%), Polish 3rd Standard silver (80%), Austrian 13 Loth silver (81.3%), Italian 800 silver (80%), English Britannia silver (95.84%), American Coin silver (90%), Swedish 83% alloy, French 1st Alloy (95%), Czech Bohemian 800 standard (80%), varying Indian silver alloys especially from Rajasthan (as low as 75% as high as 99%), Bombay .999 Silver alloy (99%+), and probably more, this is why I am writing a book on this stuff. Very fun to research silver and the history behind it.

I really just enjoy history and I like using the silver that I find from different times and places. Today I had dinner and I was using my silver pepper shaker from 1718 and every time I shake pepper from it there is an aura of 'this thing is still working exactly as it was working in the time Black Beard was sailing the seas plundering treasure like this and here it is now exactly the same in the year 2018 on my table - like 300 years never went by at all.' I just like thinking of all the current events going on in the places that these objects came from when they were new. It's like every time I use these things I can relate and reach back in time and get a feel for how it was. History comes alive when you have artifacts from the time and place you are researching, it makes the stories real and not just words or pictures on a page. Stories are treasure as much as artifacts are, combine the two and the story becomes tangible and easier to understand and appreciate.

 

[Reanm8er]

Absolutely fabulous! My kind of piracy!

 

[Plumbata]

It's like every time I use these things I can relate and reach back in time and get a feel for how it was. History comes alive when you have artifacts from the time and place you are researching

I absolutely agree and understand, it likely has something to do with how individual brains are wired, so as a Visuo-Kinesthetic learner/thinker touching an artifact can be like traveling through time; a very potent and rich experience. By 3rd grade I was known by the estate-sale operators in town as having "The Eye", a natural intuitive gift for understanding antiques and artifacts. You seem to be wired the same way, with a knack for finding things that wasn't learned from any book.

Regarding using artifacts in daily life, I've used a 3,200 year old bog-preserved Bronze Age dagger with original bone handle more than a few times as a letter-opener. Although the transitory hunter-gatherer types who lost or ritually deposited it weren't opening mail with the blade, it is extraordinary to hold and touch the same surface those nameless individuals did several millennia ago, like 2 people separated by glass placing their hands together on the window, only in this case the barrier is thousands of years instead of a piece of glass, with the item itself being the portal used to reach back in time and shake the hands of our ancient forebears. Surely you feel something similar when grabbing the shaker or anything else of potency; the fingertips of individuals whose names may have been obscured by the long passage of time but who certainly lived and loved and died on the other side of those 300 years. It's an exceptionally rich experience that many people will never understand.

 

[Davers]

That is just excellent! I am a big thrift store hunter and I always look at potential silver pieces. But I guess I should be looking at them much closer. Congrats on the great find.

I hear ya.

I usually tend to forget my magnifier.

That's a huge score Underminer.

 

[UnderMiner]

I absolutely agree and understand, it likely has something to do with how individual brains are wired, so as a Visuo-Kinesthetic learner/thinker touching an artifact can be like traveling through time; a very potent and rich experience. By 3rd grade I was known by the estate-sale operators in town as having "The Eye", a natural intuitive gift for understanding antiques and artifacts. You seem to be wired the same way, with a knack for finding things that wasn't learned from any book.

Regarding using artifacts in daily life, I've used a 3,200 year old bog-preserved Bronze Age dagger with original bone handle more than a few times as a letter-opener. Although the transitory hunter-gatherer types who lost or ritually deposited it weren't opening mail with the blade, it is extraordinary to hold and touch the same surface those nameless individuals did several millennia ago, like 2 people separated by glass placing their hands together on the window, only in this case the barrier is thousands of years instead of a piece of glass, with the item itself being the portal used to reach back in time and shake the hands of our ancient forebears. Surely you feel something similar when grabbing the shaker or anything else of potency; the fingertips of individuals whose names may have been obscured by the long passage of time but who certainly lived and loved and died on the other side of those 300 years. It's an exceptionally rich experience that many people will never understand.

Couldn't have worded it better myself, cheers!

 

[Reanm8er]

Amen bros, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to yard sales and some box lot would say I'm here, look inside! I started out this summer determined to find some sterling for my casting hobby, but noooo! Two sets of Gorham candlesticks, a Gorham bud vase, a 7" Newport sterling Paul Revere repro bowl, countless sterling smalls and some real high quality hallmarked plated items. We have a yard crawl here every year and some of the churches put out some real finds, but they don't know what they are. So we go there and I've already snagged a nice ITAXCO piece that looks like an electric cord, a $15 Nikon SLR and a bunch of other select stuff. Between my wife and myself we just started a pile by the cashier's desk. I go over there to put something in the pile and when I bend over I found myself eye to eye with a marked Spratling baby cup 1940 to 1946. That which my wife doesn't claim will probably go on Ebay this Christmas but I still don't have any casting scrap. Oh well, maybe next year.

 

[UnderMiner]

Amen bros, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to yard sales and some box lot would say I'm here, look inside! I started out this summer determined to find some sterling for my casting hobby, but noooo! Two sets of Gorham candlesticks, a Gorham bud vase, a 7" Newport sterling Paul Revere repro bowl, countless sterling smalls and some real high quality hallmarked plated items. We have a yard crawl here every year and some of the churches put out some real finds, but they don't know what they are. So we go there and I've already snagged a nice ITAXCO piece that looks like an electric cord, a $15 Nikon SLR and a bunch of other select stuff. Between my wife and myself we just started a pile by the cashier's desk. I go over there to put something in the pile and when I bend over I found myself eye to eye with a marked Spratling baby cup 1940 to 1946. That which my wife doesn't claim will probably go on Ebay this Christmas but I still don't have any casting scrap. Oh well, maybe next year.

I do similarly. Usually if I find some badly dented weighted Sterling stuff I will smash it apart, take out the cement, peel the Sterling off and squish it into a pancake with a hammer. I stockpile all these smashed pancakes of sterling with the hopes of one day melting them all down and casting a solid Sterling sculpture of something.

 

[Reanm8er]

You want to cut the solder joints out of the stuff before scrapping it for casting. It can cause porosity and irregular surface quality.

 

[against the wind]

That is a score and a half!!
Congratulations