Silverware set - worth anything?

Hi all,

I found this silverware set in the attic of my house after moving in and pulled it down and it has sat in the laundry for months not really knowing what to do. This was one of the only items up in the attic so read into that what you will.

Is anyone able to guide me in working out whether it could be worth something and what my next steps should be?

Thanks very much for your help in advance!

Cheers!

Pics attached!

 

Welcome, Danzar. We like out photos full size:



You say it is a set. We can't tell from the jumble whether or not they are matching pieces, but it is certainly easy enough to find Ranleigh in an Internet search. Seems they make silver plate in Australia. Is that where you are? If they are not really a set, if some of the other pieces are not Ranleigh, we can't do much to help you if you do not show them individually, including shots of the bottoms & of any marks.

 

The pepper mill and the mug look interesting.This feels like a Mr. Nate post !

 

well then....... @MrNate

 

It would be most helpful if you could show each piece with markings or at least any marking on each piece. If sterling, the value would be much greater than if they are silverplate.

 

Silver plate is worth next to nothing - especially in Australia. There's loads of it, and nobody wants it.

 

Along those lines,havent I heard somewhere that silver over copper sells because of the copper?

 

Thanks all for the welcome and the help. Hopefully I've uploaded the images full size this time.

Yes I'm from Australia. Most of the items have the ranleigh sticker. I've attached a photo of the bottom of a bowl which was a different brand, and it says "silverplate" - see the image.

One of the Ranleigh items had a break, so I took a photo of the break point. I thought you might be able to identify that it is silverplated only? It looks a bit crumbly inside, not what I would have expected for sterling.

I've also added a pic of the bottom of the pepper grinder, looks like a different brand again but it does also say silverplate.

Does that mean the whole lot is largely worthless?

 

Possibly? I don't know. Isn't silver-over-copper basically Sheffield Plate?

I used to work a lot in charity-shops, and we used to get boxes and boxes and BOXES of EPNS, etc, coming in every day. And you could NOT shift that stuff for love or money.

We were selling it for LITERALLY pennies a pound, and you could NOT get rid of it fast enough. Nobody wanted to buy it.

 

Just to forestall a misunderstanding - Sheffield Plate is created by a mechanical process, whereas 20th century "silver over copper" is an electroplating process. SP involved pressing a sheet of silver and a sheet of copper together by "rolling" (imagining doing this with a modern pasta maker.) In this process there is no "white metal" base for making items.

From about the mid-1800s the electroplating process became widely available to make items more quickly and less expensively. Plating the base metal with copper first produced a more durable surface upon which to apply the silver plating layer and manufacturers began making customers aware of this advantage by labeling items with "silver over copper." Mostly seen on US items in the mid-20th century. I don't know whether this was the case in Australia.

 

that's why it was left in the attic...!

 

What’s the bottom/underside of the cup look like?