Orange County silver buying
Sell silver privately in Orange County.
Sterling flatware and hollowware, pre-1965 US 'junk' silver, and silver bullion bars, rounds and Eagles. Silver is heavier to handle and moves on a wider market than gold, and we will be straight with you about what that means.
Request a Gold OfferWhat silver we buy
Three main forms. Sterling: flatware sets, tea services, trays, candlesticks, bowls and jewelry, marked 'Sterling' or '925.' Junk silver: circulated US dimes, quarters, half dollars and dollars dated 1964 and earlier, called 'junk' only because they carry no collector premium, not because they lack value. And bullion: American Silver Eagles, rounds and bars from recognized refiners. Weighted or 'reinforced' sterling — candlesticks and trophy bases with a plaster or pitch-filled base under a thin silver shell — we buy for the silver only, which is far less than the object's size suggests. Silver plate, marked EPNS, EP or 'plated,' has essentially no recoverable silver value and we generally cannot pay for it, however heavy the tray feels. Foreign silver is welcome too — European .800 and .835 hallmarks, sterling from Britain, Mexico and beyond — provided the mark states a real silver content rather than a maker's decoration.
Sterling, coin silver and the fineness math
Sterling is 92.5 percent pure silver, a fineness of .925, with the balance copper for strength — the '925' stamp states it outright. Older American 'coin silver' flatware runs about .900. Pre-1965 US dimes, quarters and half dollars are 90 percent silver; Kennedy halves from 1965 to 1970 are a lower 40 percent silver and are valued separately. A troy ounce is about 31.1 grams, the same unit used for gold, and silver is priced by that ounce. Because silver is worth far less per gram than gold, it takes a great deal more weight to reach the same value, which is why a full canteen of flatware is genuinely worth handling and a single spoon usually is not. American Silver Eagles are a straightforward case — each is one troy ounce of .999 fine silver by mint standard — so a tube of Eagles is valued on a known content rather than a test, and the same is true of most modern rounds and bars stamped .999.
How a silver offer is calculated, and the honest part about the spread
The mechanics mirror gold: verified fineness multiplied by net silver weight, set against the live silver market at the time of sale. For flatware we deduct any non-silver weight — knife blades are stainless steel set into weighted or filled sterling handles, so a knife holds less silver than its heft implies. Here is the honest part: the silver market carries a wider buy-sell spread than gold. The gap between what refiners pay for silver and what it sells for is proportionally larger, silver is bulkier and costlier to ship and refine per dollar of value, and all of that sits between the raw market number and a real offer. We do not publish a fixed per-ounce figure, and we would rather explain why silver nets less against its 'spot' headline than let you be surprised at the table.
What raises or lowers value
Full matched sterling sets, heavy hollowware and sorted junk-silver rolls are efficient to buy and value well for their weight. Monogrammed flatware carries the same silver as unmonogrammed, so an engraved set is not worth less by weight. Bags mixing silver plate with sterling slow the sort, and the plate itself pays nothing. As with coins, do not polish junk silver or numismatic pieces before selling — for straight sterling scrap a tarnished tray is fine as is, since it is going to be weighed either way.
What to bring or photograph
Group sterling together and set plated pieces aside if you can read the marks. Photograph the maker's mark and the 'Sterling' or '925' stamp on the underside of flatware and hollowware, and photograph junk silver as sorted rolls or piles with a few dates visible. A total weight in grams or pounds, even rough, lets us give you a preliminary range — silver value tracks weight closely, so an accurate weight tells us a lot before we meet. For flatware, a rough count of place settings and serving pieces is just as useful as a weight, since a standard set's silver content is fairly predictable once we know the pattern and the number of pieces.
Why a specialist for silver
Silver is exactly where a mall gold-buyer is weakest: many will not touch flatware at all, or will pay a flat token for a set worth real money by weight, and few can tell 90 percent junk silver from 40 percent halves or sterling from plate on sight. We sort it properly, weigh net silver on a calibrated scale, and pay from that, deducting only what genuinely is not silver. Because silver's value lives in quantity, we are set up to handle full sets and coin lots by private appointment in Orange County or by insured shipping, settling in cash or wire once purity and weight are verified. If a flatware set is by a noted maker or a complete, matched pattern in demand, we will tell you when it is worth more sold intact to a replacement-china dealer than melted for its silver — the same principle that governs everything we buy.