Beginner's Checklist for Buying Antique Silver

Silver has a way of catching people. A single spoon picked up at a car boot sale, a christening mug inherited from a great-aunt, a teapot glimpsed in a shop window on a wet Saturday — and suddenly you are turning pieces over, hunting for little punched marks, wondering what you have actually got. Antique silver is one of the more forgiving areas for a beginner. Most of it is marked, most of it can be dated, and a great deal of reference material exists to check your instincts. The trick is knowing what to look at, and in what order.

Read the hallmarks first

British silver is hallmarked, and those marks are the first thing to examine — ideally before you fall in love with the shape of the thing. A full set usually includes the maker's or sponsor's mark, the assay office mark, a date letter and a standard mark. Some pieces also carry a duty mark, the reigning sovereign's head, used between 1784 and 1890 to show that tax had been paid.

The standard mark tells you what the metal actually is. The lion passant means sterling silver, 925 parts per thousand. A figure of Britannia means the older Britannia standard of 958, used at the end of the seventeenth century and sometimes afterwards. Scottish silver often carries a thistle, Irish pieces a crowned harp or Hibernia. Assay office marks include the London leopard's head, the Birmingham anchor, the Sheffield crown and the Edinburgh castle.

Now the caution. Each assay office ran its own sequence of letters, punches and shield shapes, and the sequence returns after a gap of years, so a date letter alone proves little until you know which office and which cycle it belongs to. Look at whether the marks are crisp or rubbed almost flat. Be suspicious of marks that sit awkwardly on the surface, or that show a fine line of solder behind them — marks do get cut out of small damaged pieces and inserted into larger ones. Silver plate, meanwhile, is often stamped with imitation marks designed to look official at a glance. Those are decorative, not legal, and they mean nothing.

Solid silver or silver plate?

Plate is the beginner's most common mistake. Electroplated nickel silver (EPNS), electroplated Britannia metal and the older fused Sheffield plate can all look convincing after a polish, and plenty of it is well made. The difference shows at the wear points: the rims of trays, the edges of handles, the bases of candlesticks, the space between fork tines. Where plate has worn, the base metal beneath shows through as a patch of yellow, pink or grey. Solid silver simply thins, and eventually may split — it never reveals a different metal underneath.

A magnet proves very little. Sterling silver is not magnetic, but neither are brass, copper or nickel silver. Use your eyes, a bright light and a magnifier instead, and read every stamp on the base.

Weight, and what is hidden inside

Weight matters, but not in the simple way beginners expect. Solid silver scrap value sets a rough floor under a damaged piece, and heavier pieces often cost more, but the weight you feel is not the weight of silver you are buying. Candlesticks, teapot bases, coffee pots and many comports are loaded with resin, plaster or pitch for stability. Hollow knife handles are usually filled too. If weight is important to you, ask the seller for the actual silver weight rather than the gross weight, and be wary of a vague answer.

A light, beautifully made piece can be worth far more than a heavy, clumsy one. Weight is one factor among several, not the whole story.

Look at condition like a restorer

Hold the piece under a good lamp and work round it slowly. A few things are worth checking in particular:

• Thinness and wear. Decades of polishing remove metal. Edges that feel papery, engraving that has gone soft, or a hallmark nearly smoothed away all suggest heavy treatment.
• Dents and splits. A shallow dent in a bowl can often be worked out. A sharp crease, a split along a seam, or a crack where a handle meets the body is serious.
• Repairs. Soldered patches rarely match the surrounding colour exactly, and often leave a fine grey line or a slightly dull area.
• Erased engraving. Families have always removed crests and monograms. Where a crest has been polished out, the metal is thinner and you can often see a ghost outline.
• Moving parts. Lids should close squarely, hinges should feel firm, and teapot spouts should be straight and unbent.

Tarnish is not damage. It is a surface layer that comes off with gentle cleaning, and it protects the metal beneath. Resist the urge to scrub anything vigorously.

Judge the making, not just the metal

Two objects of the same weight and date can differ hugely in quality. Look at the gauge of the metal, the crispness of the engraving, whether handles are cast solidly or stamped from thin sheet, and whether the proportions feel considered. Compare the lid pattern with the body pattern: a mismatched lid, or wear that looks different on the two, suggests a marriage of parts rather than an original piece. Ask yourself whether this looks as though someone cared when they made it.

What counts as a fair price

There is no formula. Value depends on maker, date, rarity, form, condition and how much someone else wants it this week. The practical approach is to gather comparisons. Auction houses publish past results, and dealers display retail prices, and the gap between the two is wide — trade prices are lower partly because auction buyers take on risk, pay a buyer's premium, and often pay VAT on that premium, and usually buy without a right of return.

Dealer prices include cleaning, restoration, research, a shop, and a guarantee that the description is accurate. That is worth something, especially when you are learning. Treat the silver content as a floor beneath solid silver rather than a target, and treat any talk of guaranteed investment returns with polite scepticism. If you are spending significant money, take your own advice seriously and consider taking specialist advice before committing.

Questions to ask before you pay

1. Can you read me the hallmarks, and what do they say?
2. Is this solid silver or plate?
3. Has it been restored, repaired or re-engraved?
4. What is the silver weight, excluding any filling?
5. Do you offer a return period, and will I get a written receipt describing the piece?

Start small, and buy slowly

Spoons are the ideal training ground. They are hallmarked on the stem, they are easy to date, they are usually affordable, and there are thousands of them to compare. Buy one, take it home, and identify every mark with a copy of Jackson's Hallmarks or an online hallmark database. Note the maker, the date, the assay office. Do that ten times and you will spot things in a shop that most people walk straight past.

Then decide what you actually want: a usable set of forks, a single good teapot, a collection of Victorian mustard pots. Buy the best example of something you love rather than a job lot of things you feel indifferent about. Keep pieces somewhere dry, handle them, use them, and polish them lightly and rarely. Buy from dealers and auction houses with clear descriptions and sensible returns, keep the receipts, and let your eye develop before your spending does.

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