Melt value
£0
At £1.58 per gram fine, 21 September 2026
Tool
Scrap silver value calculator
Melt value is the floor, not the price. Weigh the piece and choose the standard to see what the metal is worth, then judge it against what objects like it have made in the saleroom.
Scrap silver calculator
Weigh the piece and choose the standard. The result is what the metal alone is worth.
At auction, this weight
£180 to £1,150
Teapots, tankards and small salvers
Most British silver is sterling. A refiner pays a little under melt. The auction figures are examples of what objects of that weight have made, not a valuation of yours: maker, date and condition decide it, which is what scrap value or auction value covers.
Scrap value by weight
What the silver in a piece is worth at the benchmark price, for the common standards and weights. A refiner pays under these figures.
| Standard | 10 g | 50 g | 100 g | 500 g | 1 kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fine silver 999 | £15.78 | £78.92 | £158 | £789 | £1,578 |
Britannia 958 | £15.14 | £75.68 | £151 | £757 | £1,514 |
Sterling 925 | £14.62 | £73.08 | £146 | £731 | £1,462 |
Continental 800 | £12.64 | £63.2 | £126 | £632 | £1,264 |
Silver plate EPNS, A1, Sheffield plate | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
Metal content at the reference price, before any refining charge or dealer margin.
Melt or auction
The calculator gives you one number. The saleroom gives you another, and the gap between them is the whole decision.
The comparison beside the result makes the point: Georgian teapots of about 600 grams have made between £180 and £1,150 at hammer, a range that straddles the melt figure next to it. A tired example with a split handle and a worn crest sells under its metal value once commission comes off. A crisp one by a name doubles it.
Send it to the refiner when the object has nothing to offer beyond its weight: damaged pieces, odd single spoons, plain modern hollowware, anything with a monogram buffed out and a dished patch left behind. These make at or near melt in a saleroom, and the refiner settles faster.
Auction is the answer when the marks, the date or the form are doing work. The scrap value or auction value guide walks the decision through properly.
What lifts a piece above its metal
Four things: the maker, the date, the form and the condition it has survived in. A name moves the price further than the rest of the list put together. Paul Storr, Hester Bateman, Omar Ramsden, Georg Jensen and Liberty & Co all carry a premium that owes nothing to weight, and the makers' register has the marks to look for.
Read the marks before you weigh anything. Four small stamps give you the metal, the assay office, the year and the maker, which takes two minutes with the hallmark identifier. Then check the price records for the range comparable pieces make.
What comes off the weight
A kitchen scale weighs the whole object. A refiner pays for the silver in it.
Candlesticks are where this bites. The base is filled with pitch or plaster to stop it toppling, so a pair reading 1,200 grams on the scale holds a few hundred grams of metal. They are marked "loaded" or "weighted" near the hallmark. Glass liners, wooden handles, steel knife blades and bone or ivory insulators all come off as well.
Plate is worth nothing as scrap. EPNS, A1 and "Sheffield plate" all describe a coating measured in microns over a base metal, and no refiner will weigh it. The six tests for solid silver or plate settle it at the kitchen table.
Timing the sale
The line below is the benchmark in pounds per gram of fine silver, from a month back to twenty years. Drag or hover along it to read any single day.
Latest
—
Reading the benchmark
Over the year
—
Loading the price history.
Source: the LBMA silver price, the London benchmark published each working day by the London Bullion Market Association. A refiner pays under the benchmark, and a high-street buyer pays less again.
The long ranges earn their place before a sale. Silver reached a peak in 2011 that took more than a decade to approach again, and the gap between a weak year and a strong one dwarfs the gap between one refiner's offer and the next.
How the number is worked out
Weight in grams, multiplied by the fineness of the standard, multiplied by the price of fine silver per gram. Sterling is 925 parts pure in every thousand, so a 600 gram sterling teapot contains 555 grams of silver. Britannia is 958. Most continental silver is 800 or 835.
The price is the LBMA silver price, the London benchmark set at noon each working day and the figure British refiners and bullion dealers settle against. It refreshes here within the hour, and the date it was set sits beneath the result. A refiner pays under the benchmark and a high-street buyer pays less again, so treat it as a ceiling rather than an offer. The silver price page carries the same benchmark per gram, per troy ounce and per kilo, with every standard from fine down to coin silver.