Featured How do I know how much silver?

I picked up these fischer sterling weighted silver candle holders at my local thrift. I put them both on my scale and they weigh 2 pounds 6 ounces. I am wondering though how can you tell how much silver is on the candle holders since they are not 100 percent sterling? I googled silver prices today and it says sterling is around 32 or 33 dollars and some change for 1 ounce. Thank you for any information

 

tear them apart ..... only way to know the actual silver weight........

 

You may get close to an ounce out each of these. The arms are extremely tough to peel. The cups are very thin sheeting. Keep the bandaids handy.

 

I call weighted sterling "silver tinfoil"; it's a very thin layer of silver over a chalk or similar weight and a steel armature. I'd feel lucky getting an ounce out of each. The small version? Not even an ounce between two of them.

 

lol, listen to terry @rink28

 

IDK, they're kind of mid-moddy, you might be able to sell them. I can see them polished up, with candles, they'd look nice.

 

Yes. They will polish up like solid silver does, with them being filled. The silver doesn't wear thin like plate does. Probably worth more as they are than they are as scrap. Less effort than stripping the silver off and less chance of a degloving accident.

 

Where did you hear about said 'degloving' and no I was not wearing gloves

 

ouch. Skin graft?

 

I wasn't aware of your specific meat slicing fest. I have to attend first aid training every three years through my employment and they always show an example of a ring degloving incident. Eesh

 

There will be probably around 5 0z of sterling in the two candle holders but figure about an hour each to strip out all the weighted stuff. Here is one I just did so you get a little idea of whats involved.


weight of 11.665 oz (note this does not have the base so yours will be heavier



starting to peel



1st one done



will continue as site will not allow any more pics

 

continued


only 2 cuts on hand so far!



shows how thin the silver is



All done the bars were a buger!!



There you have it a total of 1.5 ozs sterling out of 11.665 total. also 2 cuts and about an hour of my time so around 41 bucks less the cost of the thing ( got it for a buck at a sale) Hope this helps.

 

It's been awhile since I sold any scrap silver but I do check this chart from time to time. You can adjust the type of weight you're using, the silver quality (.925 etc) then enter the weight and allow for the melt costs if you know them.

Last time I sent anything to the recycler they charged 10%, I think, so I use -10% in the profit/loss section.

I "think" it's a pretty good rough estimate.

https://www.silverrecyclers.com/Calculators/silverjewelry_calculator.aspx