How to Get Money for Old, Tarnished Silver Platters and Tea Sets
People find old silver tea sets in attics or storage units and the first thing they notice is how black and tarnished everything looks. Then they assume it's worthless. That assumption is wrong, but only if what they've got is actually sterling silver and not silver plate.
The tarnish part doesn't matter at all. Sterling silver is sterling silver whether it's polished to a mirror finish or covered in black oxidation. What matters is whether you have real silver or just a thin coating over base metal, because Specialty Metals Smelters & Refiners only processes sterling silver. If your tea set is silver-plated, we can't help you. That's not being difficult, it's just that the economics of refining plated items don't work.
So before you do anything else, figure out which one you have.
Sterling or Plated? Check the Marks
Turn those platters over. Look at the bottom of teapots, under handles, anywhere a manufacturer would stamp a mark. Sterling pieces will say "925," "Sterling," or "Ster" somewhere on them. British pieces often have hallmarks like the lion passant. Quality makers like Gorham, Tiffany, or Reed & Barton marked their sterling clearly because it was a selling point.
Silver-plated items say completely different things: "EPNS," "Silver Plate," "A1," "Sheffield Plate." Those markings tell you there's a paper-thin layer of silver electroplated onto copper or nickel underneath. From across a room, plated and sterling can look identical. Up close with the right marks, the difference is obvious.
If you can't find marks or don't know what they mean, take a piece to a local jeweler. Most can identify sterling versus plated in about ten seconds. It's worth knowing before you start calling refiners because that's the first question everyone will ask you.
Why Tarnish Is Irrelevant for Refining
Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver by definition. That percentage stays the same whether the piece looks perfect or hasn't been cleaned in fifty years. Tarnish is silver sulfide forming on the surface when silver reacts with sulfur in the air. It's superficial. During refining, everything gets melted down and the silver is extracted and purified. The tarnish doesn't reduce how much silver is actually there.
You can polish sterling if you want it to look nice for display. For selling to a refiner, polishing does nothing except waste your time. We're weighing the metal and testing purity. Appearance is completely irrelevant to that process.
Actually, if you think your pieces might be valuable as antiques, aggressive polishing can hurt their value to collectors. Original patina matters in that market. But if you're selling for metal value, nobody cares what it looks like.
Requirements for Refining at Specialty Metals
Specialty Metals has a 100 ounce minimum for silver refining. That's about 6.25 pounds. Most complete tea services get there, especially if you include platters and serving pieces. Individual items or partial sets often don't.
We pay 80% on recovered silver with no other charges for material that is at least 90% silver. Most sterling pieces are well above 90% purity, so this works out simply. Prices vary depending on type of bullion and quantity, and silver prices change every single day based on market trading. What silver is worth today is different from what it was worth last week or what it'll be worth next month.
Before weighing anything, remove parts that aren't silver. Knife blades are usually stainless steel. Some handles are wood, bone, or plastic. Decorative accents might be other metals. That stuff adds weight without adding value and can mess with your purity percentage. Just take it off first.
If you've got 100 ounces of sterling silver, the math is straightforward from there. You're getting paid on weight times purity times current spot price times the 80% rate.
When Selling as Antiques Makes More Sense
Not every piece of sterling should go to a refiner. Some tea sets are worth more money intact than melted down. This isn't common, but it happens.
Complete matching sets from well-known makers can bring premium prices at auction or through antique dealers. Victorian pieces with elaborate decoration, Art Deco designs, or anything from particularly prestigious manufacturers sometimes exceed scrap value by a lot. Collectors pay for craftsmanship and history, not just metal.
But most silver tea sets sitting in storage don't fall into this category. Partial sets, moderately decorated pieces, or tea services from manufacturers that don't command collector interest are worth more as silver than as antiques. The market for vintage silver tea sets isn't what it used to be, and finding a buyer willing to pay over melt value takes time and effort.
If you think your set might be special, get it appraised before selling for scrap. Once it's melted, you can't undo that. But be realistic. Most inherited silver is nice, but not rare or particularly valuable beyond its metal content.
What to Do with Silver Plate
Since we don't process silver-plated items, this section is short. The silver layer on plated pieces is so thin that recovering it costs more than the silver is worth. Refiners don't buy it. If your markings say "EPNS" or "Silver Plate," you're looking at resale markets like online auctions or antique shops, not precious metal refiners. That's a completely different situation focused on decorative value.
Don't spend time polishing plated tea sets and bringing them to refiners. It won't work. The only silver worth refining is sterling.
The Basic Process
If you've confirmed your pieces are sterling, meet the 100 ounce minimum, and are ready to sell, the process is simple. Remove non-silver parts, weigh what you have, and understand that you're getting paid based on that day's silver price at the 80% rate for material over 90% purity.
Tarnish doesn't matter. Polishing doesn't matter. Condition doesn't matter. For refining, it's all about weight and purity.
The confusion most people have comes from not knowing whether they have sterling or plated, or not understanding that old tarnished silver is still valuable silver. Once you sort out those two things, selling sterling for refining is straightforward. Just make sure you have enough to meet the minimum and that you've removed anything that isn't actual silver before weighing.