/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>53944270
Alright it sounds like you are approaching things properly. If you don't already, try searching "silver mug" (tankard, cup, goblet, etc), auction format only and sorted most recently listed first in all categories, not just the "sterling silver" subcategory. Searching "sterling" whatever in titles is easy and obvious so you'll have tons of competition, figuring out what other search terms or strategies efficiently hit on "sleeper" silver is how to vacuum up the cheapies. The listings that are fresh show up at the top and ones that are overpriced and keep getting automatically relisted show up lower down so depending on the total number of results often only the first page is worth looking at when you run your weekly search, if you keep it up a while you'll get a good sense for which subcategories hold poorly listed sleepers and you can search through those subcategories more attentively.
>The ones that sell mainly silver items know they can charge a premium and charge well over melt.
Yep, here they have a pretty recognizable background and listing style so I just scroll right past all their overpriced shit while scanning for promising deals. Don't give the pros a second of your attention, you want listings posted by noob sellers with no established customer base and unprofessional pictures, titles and descriptions. As a general rule, excellent pics mean shit deals and shit pics mean excellent deals so i instinctively gravitate toward the latter when scanning search results. It'll take time to build up your instincts and heuristics but once you have figured things out it takes very little time to stay on top of things.

>>52607871
>And i'm getting better at detecting stuff too, so i'm less afraid to dive in when need. In just few weeks i progressively lowered my "wanted" entry price from $18 (yikes in retrospect) down to now not touching anything above $14/oz! I'll be ebaymaxxing everyday and hopefully one day i'll be able to reach your level of cheapies.

You're doing really well frogfren you must have a natural eye and good instincts; many people simply don't possess the traits necessary to be a superior scrapper so keep exercising and sharpening those skills. You'll definitely get your average price lower as you discover new search strategies and become better at recognizing good silver by eye alone when hallmarks aren't clearly visible in the pics, for example I can do that pretty easily with old American coin silver now because of the distinctive way the stuff was constructed. Your big chunky ~1710 silverware sounds amazing, offhand I don't know what old French silver is worth as I don't have much experience with it but would imagine that Napoleon I era and earlier silver is worth good money to collectors, I'd love to see pics. Most silver available in the USA is younger so I don't see much that's from before the late 1700s. Most 18th century silver here is English and usually isn't worth much but I save most of it anyway because the old 100% handmade silver is very interesting and has tons of character. I also save the nice 1850s and earlier American coin silver items, again they aren't usually worth much over melt but I find the stuff very appealing and full of sovl. The situation in France is different so you'll have to figure out what works best, definitely research the old silver and different silversmiths as some may be very desirable, like old antebellum American coin silver made in the southern states, some of it goes for 10-20x melt or more it's pretty impressive. Keep up the good work my scrapfren.

Got my sterling footed "salver" tray in the mail this morning, it weighs out at 610 grams of thicc sturdy silver and is a nice high quality antique piece. $158.75 total with shipping and tax on eBay for 18.14ozt of pure silver worth $397 at melt comes out to $8.75/ozt. The British hallmarks say it was made in Sheffield in 1930, not super old but it's in nice shape so I'm keeping it in the collection not refining it. Happy hunting lads.

>>52344259
>I know sterling silver usually has markings on it, but does that apply to everything?

In the USA most good silver you're likely to encounter is pretty clearly stamped or embossed "STERLING", but English sterling is marked with their own hallmarking and date letter system, early American "coin silver" items usually had no purity stamps/hallmarks but is easy to recognize with a bit of experience, and various foreign silver items all had their own domestic hallmarking systems and "standard" finenesses though conveniently they often marked things with easily understood millesimal fineness like 800, 830, 835, 900, 925, 935, 950 etc using little hallmark stamps. Take pics of all the markings and post here if you're unsure, several anons are good at reading silver stamps or recognizing silverplate and can help you out.