Inherited items can sometimes be worth more than people expect. There are several reasons for this:

Rarity and collectability - Items that are rare, unique, or have historical significance can be valuable. People may not always be aware of the rarity or historical importance of an item they inherit.

Is nostalgia standing between you and a lot of money?

We apologize if that question is rude, or of we are being impolite by asking it. But the fact is that many people are losing money (or delaying getting it) by remaining stuck in the past.

We have written before on this blog about good places to hunt for undiscovered precious metals – places like old jewelry factories, wells, drain pipes, and even graveyards.

Today, we would like to add one more place to look for old gold, silver, and platinum items that you can recycle profitably . . .

As people age, they tend to acquire a growing number of aches and pains. Yet if they have lived good lives, they often end up with something much more valuable . . .

If you have an elderly relative who is about to enter a nursing home or assisted living, chances are you are already working with a counselor who is helping you deal with their financial assets. Today’s post is not meant to serve as a substitute for the expert advice you can get from those counselors, who know the ins and outs of Medicare and other factors that can impact on financial planning for elders.

Why would anybody bother to counterfeit sterling silver? After all, silver sells for lower prices than any other precious metal. Why would anybody take the trouble to counterfeit it? The simple answer is that counterfeiters have learned to take cheap, silver-plated tableware, stamp them so they look like they were made by prestigious manufacturers, then sell them to collectors for high prices. In other words, they are artificially inflating the collectible value, not the metallic value. 

When you consider those traits side by side – beauty, softness and a tendency to tarnish – it explains why silver has often been used to fashion handles for a variety of objects that you should be on the lookout for when you go hunting for precious metals in house sales, antique stores or estate sales. You will only rarely find knives with silver blades, for example, they wouldn’t hold up well. But you will find many of these objects...

Shakespeare once wrote, “All that glitters is not gold.” If he had thought about it, he could have written something similar about silver, platinum, rhodium, and other precious metals. The fact is that some shiny things that look like they should be worth a lot of money really aren’t. They either don’t contain any precious metals at all or they contain such small quantities that there is no point sending them to a qualified precious metals refinery like Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, because the cost of extracting those metals will be greater than the value of the metals themselves.

Why would anyone invest in a set of sterling silver or silver-plated shot glasses, in a silver cocktail shaker, or in sterling swizzle sticks? It seems a little crazy. Silver tarnishes after all, and keeping it shining bright is a time-consuming chore. Why not just buy items made of glass or stainless steel and skip the tubs of silver polish?

How much gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals were in those buildings before they burned? Are those valuable metals ever recovered, or are they still waiting to be found in the ashes and rubble? 

Watching Downton Abbey can alert you to all kinds of antique precious-metal items that you can find if you’re shopping online, at antique stores, at estate sales . . . just about everywhere old metal items can be found. Here’s a checklist of items that we noticed during just one episode of the show...

Be aware that if you find even one spoon or fork from one of these prestigious makers, your discovery could be worth a lot of money to silver dealers, individuals whose sets are missing the item that you found, or as sterling silver that we can recycle for you.

Experienced silver-hunters tell us that they find much more silver at home sales than they find in antique malls, where everything has been picked over by antique dealers or estate sale specialists. If you’re lucky, you may stumble onto entire boxed sets of sterling silver tableware – you might even find an heirloom set of Old English silver.

You have probably seen niello without knowing what it was. It looks like black enamel that has been painted into the indentations around geometric patterns on the surface of decorative silver belt buckles, goblets, candlesticks and other objects. But niello isn’t paint. It is actually a compound made of silver, sulphur and other chemicals.

If you go shopping at antique malls or estate sales, you will discover a number of items for sale that are made of gray metal. How can you tell if they are made of silver, white gold or platinum?

On average, quarters minted in 1964 or before contain 18% pure silver that is worth more than $3.25. In 1984, everything changed. That was the year when the U.S. Mint started making copper-nickel clad quarters for circulation. They contain no silver.  

If you walk into an estate sale or antique shop, chances are good that you will find trophies, class rings, beer steins and tabletop cigarette lighters. They all found their way into many American homes in years gone by. Those items are so common that it is easy to forget that they often contain significant quantities of silver and gold that are well worth recycling.