replacements.com is great for china, too. I’m more a buyer on that site than a seller, though. It’s great for filling in missing pieces.
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If they are sterling, I would take them to a local gold/silver store first. They might be worth more melted down.
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@VeryHappy and @ChoatieMom - I’m blaming you for going down the rabbit hole of looking at china, regular dishes, crystal etc. last night. It can be a long hole :).
I do have some real silver I was planning to take to a place to sell right as COVID hit. I’m guessing it will be worth more now.
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@notrichenough: My first thought in response to your comment was, No! Sterling flatware is a work of art.
And then I looked at the price of silver, and weighed some very similar spoons that I had. Instead of the $204 I got, I might have gotten $466.
This is a moral dilemma. I’m really torn. What should I do with the other pieces I want to get rid of??
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Obviously, the pieces have no value to you, and there is no moral obligation to preserve them as “art” unless they have been appraised to be so (they would have to be a very old, very rare pattern to qualify, and even then…)
Get the best price you can and let your conscience rest easy.
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I have heard from friends who recently looked into using replacements that the amount they were going to get for China wasn’t very high and replacement required the seller to pay shipping which ended up being a waste. I recently took a number of Waterford, orrefors and Stuben to a consignment shop. Not sure how that will play out, but I really don’t need them.
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I think it could feel good to know that a shopper at a consignment shop finds the items and put them to get use.
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I share your feelings. I am realizing it is ok to repurpose, sell, donate, gift, sell things left to me.
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Well, I don’t disagree. I got a price quote on the second item I wanted to sell to them. It’s a three-piece carving set (fork, knife, and knife sharpener) from an 1895 discontinued pattern called Hanover by Gorham. See my pictures below. They only offered me $97 for all three pieces. I’m really disappointed and not sure what I’m going to do. I may try Ebay instead.
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Gosh, those are impressive. I hope you are able to find them a good home.
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Maybe we should start a buy/sell/for sale thread!!
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My mother had 2 set of sterling silver flatware that was sitting under my aunt’s bed! She would sometimes use it for the holidays, but has her own set also. As mom was running out of money, we decided to sell it for the weight when silver was at a high. It was worth more by weight than it was to sell to Replacements or other companies. While mom refuses to sell any jewelry to help with her care, we decided to sell the silver. It gave me about 7 months to cover her overage.
Mom will never know we sold these as it has been out of sight for several years. While I feel badly, no one in the family wanted either set, and mom needed the money.
I also recently took old jewelry sitting around the house to sell. Some was my dad’s and husband’s, other was just old chains and bracelets. Again, no one wanted any of this, and while gold and silver was at an all time high, I sold. I ended up with $25K! As mom’s caregivers were initially running $5K/week, this gave me some breathing room. I think it helps than neither my daughter or myself need/want for a lot, so to us, this was just stuff. There is better jewelry of mom’s that we have an eye on, but if we need to sell, everyone, other than mom, will be ok.
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I just received my check from Replacements for the $204 they promised me, for the six soup spoons. Lovely.
Then I went online to see what Replacements is charging for the spoons. $94.95 each!!! 
So apparently they pay around one third of what they’re going to sell it for. I don’t begrudge that; they’re taking a risk by holding onto the inventory for who-knows-how-long. But it does suggest to me how much I should ask on eBay for the carving set I posted pictures of, above.
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After reading these posts about silver flatware, I looked for my pattern on ebay. I think I could get about 10x what I paid for it (on ebay) about 30 years ago. I bought the same pattern my mother had from the 50s and now I have both sets (although my siblings might argue that the silver should be split from my mother’s set), so 8 place settings are mine and another 9 from my mother, plus some extras (I have a carving set too but just the knife and fork, not the sharpening steel).
My mother loved her silver as it was her wedding present from her family (and really the only thing she ever got from them). We used it every holiday. I used mine less as I didn’t host as much. My mother taught me to always count the pieces before putting them away and thats saved me one Christmas. Dec 26 was trash day that year, I’d had friends over with their little kids for dinner, and I was cleaning up and dragging trash out to the curb. I heard clinking. I started digging around in the trash and found several pieces of silver the kids had throw away with their paper plates (not my kids of course because why would they clean up plates!). So I drag all the trash back into the garage and have to rip open the bags and boxes and I find a bunch of the silver pieces, some silver/gold dollars Santa and the tooth fairy had brought (yes, there was a lot of magic going on at our house that night as one kid had 2 teeth pulled on 12/24 so Santa and tooth fairy on one night), and some other Christmas gifts tossed out with the wrappings. I had to sort through ALL the trash and packaging, in the garage, on Christmas.
But count your silver before the trash goes out.
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My mother also taught me to count the silver before putting it away. It has saved me a piece or two, but not the many that you found in your trash!
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Yes! My mother had the same rule!
I thought the purpose of counting the silver was to expose aunt Alice’s souvenir tendencies.
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When my mother taught me to count the silver, my initial assumption was that she meant, Because your guests will steal it, and I was shocked. Then she clarified it was because occasionally a piece gets thrown away. Ah.
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If a guest steals it, counting won’t change anything unless you interrogate everyone. But pieces do get thrown away or put away in the wrong place after clean up, like in the everyday silverware drawer (gasp). If that happened at our house, I know that spoon would be pulled out 20 times with the mental note to ‘put it in the silver case’ and yet put right back into the drawer and pulled out again and again. Finally at the next fancy meal, it might get put back in the silver case.
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Does anyone have a recommendation for a book about home maintenance? Not looking to perform anything other than basic repairs, just looking for a book that tells what to do when something happens, how often to do routine maintenance, etc.