New Haul Silver!!!

so went to the dump as usual not much just a gateway 2000 and the matching keyboard. but in the dump garbage pile i got a box full of misc. metals such as flat cookie pans random stainless an regular steel silver ware and small aluminum also the guy that runs it was cutting cords and i asked him if i could have the ends and sure enough he just throws them back in the garbage so i got a nice little pile of those and a cd radio. also someone literally took a small waste bucket and took their silverware drawer and put the drawer and its contents into the waste bucket so when i got home i pulled out some nice finds shown below.
IMG_00341.jpg Photo by mvpvlad | Photobucket
IMG_00351.jpg Photo by mvpvlad | Photobucket
IMG_00361.jpg Photo by mvpvlad | Photobucket
IMG_00371.jpg Photo by mvpvlad | Photobucket
IMG_00381.jpg Photo by mvpvlad | Photobucket
IMG_00391.jpg Photo by mvpvlad | Photobucket
most are WM Rogers and two just say "nickle silver"

Hate to burst your bubble but from what I can see in the pics, there is no silver there. The pieces that have A1 on them have a single layer of silver plate, IS is international silver which is plated, and nickel silver is copper/nickel. Some rogers patterns are worth some money if they are a collectable pattern. Almost all real silver items will be marked Sterling, ster, 925, 925/1000 or something like that. There are some other threads on here about identifying silver marks.

The other thing to consider with silver plate items is the base metal. I would look for collectible items and learn the base metals. Also most of the knife handles contain a filler. Break one open and see what's inside the handle. I trust most scrap yards are aware of this and will not buy knife handles for the base metal without having removed the filler. Knowledge is power. Mike.

Those are still nice finds. Check the Rogers ones to see whether they are brass or copper under the plating. They should still bring in a good return especially since they were free.

i knew most weren't silver i only thought the nickle silver ones were i had that epiphany while back metal detecting. i had found one of the rogers in the same design as one of the ones above and had it looked at. thank you guys for your info. haha when i said here are the goodies i meant the keepers not meaning the silver ones.

Did I understand right, you took a computer and key board to the dump?

nah i went to the dump and i get all my scrap there

If that silverware is a complete matching set you could sell it for more than scrap on e-bay or craigslist. If you are going to sell it as a complete set I would not clean it, sell it as is.

Also, one more thing to add here. Sometimes plated silver will have a star followed by a number or vice versa. This is a "multiple plating" and the number means how many ounces (troy) were used in the set, most sets were 144 pieces, knife, teaspoon, soup spoon, small fork, large fork 24 of those, then the serving pieces, and usually most sets also included a baby spoon and fork. THOSE are valuable no matter what they are. Do the math on that and yes every piece would have a 1/12th of a troy ounce of silver on it worth about 2.50 each. Some of those items are heavy plate.