Silver Markings & Important Silver Knowledge

Many people have limited to no knowledge about the value in silver items. For laymen, it’s indeed a tough topic, as most silver-colored pieces don’t reflect a monetary value at all. But if you follow some pretty simple guidelines, distinguishing between treasure and trash is often possible.

Find the Silver Markings

The quickest and most effective way to distinguish between sellable silver and a worthless item is to locate and understand any markings/stamps that are present.

A silver-colored item will likely have SOME VALUE if one of these markings is present:

999, 950, 925, STERLING, 900, 835, 800, COIN

A silver-colored item will have NO VALUE if one of these markings is present:

STAINLESS, PLATE, EPNS, SILVER PLATE, STEEL, COPPER, PLATED

Photo Request for Silver Items

You may receive a photo request from our support team if you started the selling process. We often ask for a photo to make sure that you’ll be a happy customer rewarded with a nice payment rather than disappointed with a return shipment.

Selling Guideline – Items You Can Submit

We have a very strict policy about HEAVY items (like cutlery, trays, or candelabras) you can submit for testing/selling. This is unfortunately necessary due to extremely high shipping costs. Too often, we have received a load of completely worthless items resulting in hundreds of dollars in shipping costs. reDollar is known for paying extremely high prices and operating on wafer-thin profit margins, which is why we have to be very selective with heavy silver items to ensure all customers can continue to receive high purchase prices.

You may NEVER submit items marked

STAINLESS, PLATE, EPNS, SILVER PLATE, STEEL, COPPER, PLATED
60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 150
You also may NOT submit items with NO marking at all.

You can ALWAYS submit items clearly marked

STERLING, 925, 999, 900, 835, 800, COIN

You may submit items marked as long as you include a photo

13, 14, 15, 16 or items showing a left facing leopard head

Our policy’s restrictions do NOT mean that you can’t send a whole collection/lot of unknown items like jewelry, coins, miniatures, and more. You are NOT required to search and sort those items. We are very happy to do that for you. Our restrictions only apply to HUGE & HEAVY items like cutlery, candlesticks, trays, bowls, etc.

Good & Bad Silver Markings

Check our photo footage of good and bad silver markings. You can always submit a photo from your silver markings to be verified by our experts. Lion head silver markings especially should always be submitted for a quick check. A left-facing leopard head usually indicates sterling silver, while most right-facing leopard heads refer to silver plated items (= no monetary value). Some items with a right-facing leopard head silver marking may indicate a silver purity of 83.3% and can be sold to our company.

GOOD MARKING

BAD MARKING

Let’s Team Up

Some people decide to team up with us to do some sort of pre-sorting. This can be fun, entertaining, and educating. Our support team is very well trained and works closely with our highly skilled experts. We are happy to educate you and review any photos you submit.

What You Can Do:

Magnetic Test

Silver is a diamagnetic metal and will not attract a magnet. Diamagnetic materials are repelled by a magnetic field, and thus a silver-colored item that sticks to a magnet is NOT made of solid silver. Those items will not have a monetary value.

Silver Markings

Markings are a great way to identify the good stuff. Almost every silver-colored item marked 800, 835, 900, 925, 950, 999, COIN, or sterling will have some monetary value. Yes, fakes exist, but they are rare. You may be alerted if your silver rings have the markings “925” and “China.” Lately we’ve seen many “Made In China” silver fakes.

Submit Photos

We love your photos. Photos will help you to better understand if you own something valuable that’s worth submitting. Photos also help us, as we can reduce the risk of having to ship items back and forth. The environment is also thankful, as fewer shipments result in fewer emissions being created. Please provide quality photos!

Leopard Head Silver Markings

Be very careful with leopard head silver markings. A left-facing leopard will refer to British sterling silver, but right-facing leopard marked items are most likely silver plated (German fake productions to imitate the British silver standard). Sometimes, a right-facing lion may refer to Dutch silver, which would be called 833 or 934 silver. Those items are valuable and can be sold to our company. Some US manufactured silver items will also bear a lion head marking.

GOOD SILVER MARKING
(British sterling silver: 925/1000)

GOOD SILVER MARKING
(Lion mark, 2nd standard purity: 833/1000)