# look what I just bought!



## chaseonbase (Jun 28, 2013)

I recently just purchased this sterling silver box. The hallmarks suggest it was made in london in 1915 from deaks & francis silver smiths which have been making items for quite some time now and are still in business. Their main work as of today is designer cufflinks. I performed a scratch test on the item with 18k gold and silver testing solutions. Showing light blue and a very vibrant red testing positive for silver. The item seems to be personalized with eeb and a date from 1928. I purchased the item for around $230.00. The one question I have for the item is should I try to sell the item hoping to gain a profit due to its antique nostalgia, or destroy and attempt to refine it. As of now I have not refined any precious metals. I did buy lazer steves silver dvd and have watched it religously. Also I forgot to add, the item currently weighs 476.87 grams with the silk liner attached. Is there a formula I could use to perhaps get an estimate on the silver weight without tearing it apart and putting it on the scale?


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## Marcel (Jun 28, 2013)

If it is really almost 100 yrs old, I would try to market in on ebay for some time. Maybe exspecially offer it to ebay UK or germany and france. If you dont get appropriate offers after some weeks, then I would consider refining it, but not unless you gave it a try.


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## JHS (Jun 28, 2013)

at today's price you would have to do the math to see if it is worth refining.with what you paid and chemicals,it seems hardly worth it


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## silversaddle1 (Jun 28, 2013)

I don't know how you would make any profit on it at $20.00 per ounce.


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## MysticColby (Jun 28, 2013)

silver used to be $1/g. it's currently about $0.65/g
476.87g * 0.925 = 441.1g silver
441.1g * $0.65/g = $286.7
it will take about half a liter of nitric to dissolve 441g silver (probably more), which will cost about $20 if you don't buy it in bulk.
it depends what the liner weighs.


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## chlaurite (Jun 28, 2013)

You already have basically one pound of clean sterling silver. If you want, you could probably remove the liner with $0.50 worth of acetone, but realistically, it probably has more value because of its age than from its metal content alone.

Ignoring its potential value as an antique, though... What exactly would you want to refine here? If you want to sell it for scrap/bullion, it won't get all that much more pure for your efforts (not enough to make it worth the effort). If you just want a pound of .999 silver, I hate to say it after-the-fact, but you should have spent $5 more on a one pound certified .999 bar.

BUT! If you want to play around a bit, you have a great bit of "scrap" on hand just sitting around waiting for an acid bath! 8)


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## chaseonbase (Jun 28, 2013)

Thank you everyone for all your comments. Basically this purchase was sort of a fluke, I use a website called auctionsniper.com. how it works is you put down the most your willing to pay and set a bid increment with in a certain range. This service basically bids the very last 5 milliseconds an auction is going to end, so you dont drive up the price on an item fighting off other potential buyers. So this is what happened. When this item was listed it was going for around ten bucks with around 12 hrs left. I thought I might get lucky and I mean really lucky the item wont go up to high. So im assuming instead of me putting down $20.00 likeI thought I did I tapped an extra 0 :x not paying attention when I confirmed. I got home from work and checked my ebay page showing you have 1 unpaid item. There I found the box with a 204 dollar price tag! My jaw dropped considering I only had 236 dollars in my bank account. So me being the good ebayer I am, no matter how it happened I was still bound by the auction, and refused to break my 100% rating. (Its not like I can say to the seller oops sorry my bidding software went on the fritz how about a re do). So thats the story on that predicament. My main goal on refining is mainly to set back for the future so I can have something when I retire. So im mainly banking on tomorrows price not today. But like seeing most people on online auctions spending 10 sometimes 20 dollars over spot is pretty crazy, and I refuse to do that. Also I love chemistry so I dont really care to go a little over budget.


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## patnor1011 (Jun 29, 2013)

Leave it as it is then.
You will have no problem to sell it later on. You actually might get more for it than you will get for powder/crystal/blob of metal if you decide to spend acid and time on it.
If it is investment then keep it in its current form.
I do have some nice pieces myself, I would prefer rounds and coins and have a lot of spoons, forks etc... but I have no doubt I will sell it without any problem when I will decide that price is right.
Another thing is that how nice it was to have nice silver spoon in your coffee, eat with silver knife, fork, spoon, have your cigarettes in nice silver case. We use cheap plastic/paper/nickel stuff and believe me it is kinda cool to have your cigarettes in something like this, at least I have that nice nostalgic feeling.
Time to get morning coffee and I am going to use my sterling spoons for that :mrgreen:


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## Ian_B (Jul 14, 2013)

Are you sure that it is just the fabric liner on the inside of the box? I only ask because I have purchased a few similar boxes that had resin tight against the sterling outside with very thin pieces of wood making the boxes shape on the inside then the fabric is attached to the wood liner... if memory serves me right the cleaned sterling from the boxes I processed was in the 150 gram range...


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## chaseonbase (Jul 29, 2013)

Ian_B said:


> Are you sure that it is just the fabric liner on the inside of the box? I only ask because I have purchased a few similar boxes that had resin tight against the sterling outside with very thin pieces of wood making the boxes shape on the inside then the fabric is attached to the wood liner... if memory serves me right the cleaned sterling from the boxes I processed was in the 150 gram range...



Your completly right ian. I had a dealer look at it and im in the process of soldering a sterling crest over the personalization. To hopefully get my money back. Theres no way im melting it. Im the idiot that has to learn the hard way on my own instead of from others. Very expensive lesson! One antique dealer said it was Chrome.. I wanted to slap him. :roll:


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## solar_plasma (Jul 29, 2013)

After what I observed, you would have a good chance to get the same money for it on ebay. It is old, looks very nice and it has some history. I had learned my lesson, when I bought some 800 silver flatware for 45€ and it turned out to be 25g silver foils on a blend of wax and sand, while in my naivity I had expected more than 100g.


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jul 29, 2013)

Unless it's damaged...

You should sell it as it is. It's worth the silver value, plus whatever other value the design and maker might add to the value.

Even if you were to decide to liquidate it for it's value, you would be better off selling it to another refiner for 90% spot, even if you did refine it that's probably all you are going to get anyway, so there would be no point incurring the costs of refining, unless you were going to sell to a jeweler.

Scott


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