I learned something new.
I actually have been a gold-buyer for several years now,
old gold jewellery, panned gold, dental gold, etc.
I only rarely have bought silver, as it is worth so little compared to gold,
and I don't have an electronic tester for silver as the only ones recently put on the market only test silver above 90% purity, which I find pretty useless, especially since my refiner said that most Mexican silver labelled 925 is only about 78% silver when it should be 92.5%
I have bought silver cutlery and plates, etc when they are clearly labelled as silver, as I have not heard of any forgeries on these types of items.
Like you, I have bought pieces labelled 800, which I figured out were from Germany. I think I bought a piece labelled 900 once. But almost always 925.
So as to your information, I would have assumed that if there is no 3-digit number, that the piece is only plated.
I don't think that any of the pieces that I looked at were antiques, but I don't know. Perhaps I told someone that their piece was worthless when in fact it was silver.
Thanks for the info!
It's a pleasure. The 3 digit number only applies to fairly modern pieces. Antique to mid century pieces were mostly only hallmarked. I have noticed a definite decline in the popularity of silver. A few years ago they used to fly and were subject to bidding wars. Now they languish! Thank you for taking the time to make this in depth comment. Much appreciated. I will always be happy to help if you have a piece you are struggling to identify.
The prices that you are setting based on the price of silver, may be too high if the person is planning to melt it down.
The refineries have higher fees than they do for gold, as it takes such a large amount of silver to be worth melting down a batch, compared to gold.
I haven't evaluated your prices closely, but it's something to keep in mind.
If the prices are too high, than it is likely that the people winning the bid are speculating on the price of silver, hoping that it will go higher and they can make some money on the silver in the future.
Thank you, that is interesting to know. Clearly they have stopped speculating. I will bear that in mind in future pricing.