Silver at an Estate Sale

trdhrdr007

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I've been lurking here for quite a while, thought it was time for a post. I'm not much of a detectorist but I hit the sales pretty hard.

I went to an estate sale this morning, it was packed. I asked the guy at the door if they had any sterling & where it was. He pointed towards a room so I headed over there. First thing I saw was my main competition finishing up weighing a coffee/tea set. It was obvious he wasn't buying so I asked him what the deal was. Turns out it was 100 ounces but they were asking $3600. Way overpriced.

I looked around the room & didn't see anything besides silver plate so I wandered off to check out the rest of the house. Lots of stuff but nothing I could make a dollar on. I thought I'd take another look at the 100 ounce set before I left so I went back to that room. As soon as I came in I saw a cream & sugar set that wasn't there the first time.

It was on the other side of a really large table with a guy eyeing it. He picked it up & checked out the bottom, then put it down. I did the boarding house reach & snatched it up. No idea why the guy put it down, it was clearly marked sterling with a $5 price tag for the set. I ended up with 16 troy ounces of sterling for around 32 cents an ounce.
 

SAWEEEEEETTT SCORE :icon_thumleft:.

Ace Villa-v
 

clearly a "pricing" error at $5 -- they most likely thought it was silver plate , rather than sterling --their goof --your sharp eye .
 

Sterling seems to be one of the most often over priced things at "estatesales." On those rare occassions when it is undervalued,
"the boarding house reach & snatching it up," is the move to make!.
 

I see a lot of overpriced sterling everywhere, seems like some people think it's worth more than gold. There are 2 sets of people locally that run estate sales & I know them both. Both sets hold an invitation only sale before they open to the general public. I can generally pick up the silver that is priced right at the invitation sale. On the second day of the public sale they cut prices by 50%, which generally lets me pick up the overpriced sterling.

The estate sale I picked up this sterling at was 45 minutes away, where I didn't know the people having it.
 

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