Large Sterling Hoard

I was contacted last week by a friend I work for occasionally that runs an estate sale company. She had just signed the contract on a new estate & wanted me to check out the sterling. She said there was a good bit & the owners wanted an offer on the entire lot as they weren't comfortable leaving it in a vacant house.

I was pretty surprised when I got over there. There were 2 wooden flatware chests, a very heavy small box & 2 large U-haul boxes. My friend told me that the owners said everything there was sterling but she hadn't checked it herself. That usually means most of the stuff is silver plate. When I opened the 2 large U-haul boxes about half of it turned out to be plated but there were 2 sterling tea services & a lot of misc. holloware. Both of the flatware chests contained sterling. The small heavy box had 2 more sterling flatware sets & a bunch of random utensils.

A family member wanted to keep one of the tea services & needed a value so it could be counted as part of their inheritance. The rest they wanted an offer on. I sorted everything out & valued the tea service. Then I pointed out the pieces I knew would sell for considerably more than melt. Those were set aside to sell on an individual basis. That still left 412 troy ounces of common sterling that I made an offer on.

I got a call Monday evening from my friend saying my offer was accepted. I picked up the lot yesterday morning & have been separating the pieces I will sell in my display case from those that will go to the refiner. One really cool piece I found was a commemorative spoon from the 1893 Worlds Fair. After doing some research on it I found it's not particularly valuable. I think it will look good on my wall mounted in a frame with a commemorative half.