Sterling Silver Price Today

What sterling silver is worth per gram, ounce and pennyweight

Sterling silver is worth 92.5% of the silver spot price for the same weight, because a piece stamped 925 is 925 parts pure silver per thousand. There is no separate “sterling silver spot price today” on any exchange; every sterling figure, including the ones at the top of this page, is the fine silver price multiplied by 0.925.

The other 7.5% is almost always copper. Pure silver is too soft to hold a fork tine, a ring shank or a crisp engraved border, and a small dose of copper hardens it without changing its color much. The trade-off is chemistry: copper oxidizes when sterling is heated during soldering, which can leave a grayish stain jewelers call firescale, and sterling tarnishes as the silver reacts with sulfur compounds in the air.

How much is a gram of sterling silver worth?

1. Divide the silver spot price by 31.1035 to get the value of a gram of fine silver. At the $40 example, that is $1.2860.
2. Multiply by 0.925 for sterling: $1.2860 × 0.925 = $1.1896 per gram.
3. Multiply by the net weight of silver in grams. A 30-gram bracelet comes to about $35.69.

The same logic answers the cost of sterling silver per ounce: at $40 spot, a troy ounce of sterling carries $37.00 of silver. Anyone quoting you “925 silver per gram” or “value of silver 925 per gram” is using this multiplier, whether they say so or not. The silver price per gram page runs the same math for coin silver, Britannia and European 800 silver.

How far below 925 can sterling legally be?

Under the U.S. National Gold and Silver Stamping Act, an article marked “sterling” or “sterling silver” must contain 925 parts per thousand of silver, with a tolerance of 4 parts per thousand. In practice that means a piece can assay as low as 921 and still be lawfully stamped. The difference is about half a percent, too small to change the value of household pieces in any noticeable way.

Reading the marks: STERLING, 925, the lion and the look-alikes

The value calculation only works if the piece is really sterling. Before you weigh anything, find the mark and decide which of these families it belongs to.

Marks that mean sterling

• STERLING spelled out is the traditional American mark, usually next to a maker’s name or trademark and often a pattern name on flatware.
• 925 or .925 states the same standard in parts per thousand. It is the usual mark on imported jewelry and on most modern pieces worldwide.
• A lion passant, a walking lion in profile, is the English hallmark for sterling. Scottish assay offices have used their own standard marks, historically a thistle or a rampant lion.
• “MEXICO 925” or “STERLING MEXICO” marks Mexican silver made to the sterling standard.
• “Vermeil” on American jewelry means gold over sterling. Under the FTC’s jewelry guides the base must be sterling and the gold layer at least 10 karat and 2.5 microns thick. For melt purposes it’s priced as sterling; the gold adds almost nothing.

British hallmarks in general terms

A full British hallmark is a group of small stamps, not one. Under the Hallmarking Act 1973, silver articles above 7.78 grams sold as silver in the UK must be hallmarked by an independent assay office.

What each punch tells you

• The sponsor’s mark: initials in a shield identifying the maker or importer.
• The standard mark: the lion passant for sterling, or a figure of Britannia for the higher 958 standard. Since 1999 the fineness may also appear as the number 925 in a cartouche.
• The assay office mark: for example a leopard’s head for London, an anchor for Birmingham, a castle for Edinburgh, and a crown or later a rose for Sheffield.
• A date letter, compulsory for centuries and optional since 1999, which lets collectors date a piece to its year.

Beware of pseudo-hallmarks. Victorian and later makers of plated wares often stamped rows of small symbols that imitate a hallmark at a glance but include no lion and no assay office mark.

Marks that look like silver but aren’t sterling

“Mexican silver” is not a purity on its own. Mid-century Mexican pieces often carry a spread-eagle assay mark with a number, and later pieces a registration code of letters and digits in which the first letter identifies the city, T being Taxco. Those codes point to a registered workshop, but only a fineness figure such as 925 tells you the silver content. Plain “Mexico” with no number should be tested before anyone pays for it as silver.

Valuing sterling flatware, hollowware and jewelry

Sterling is sold by weight, but the scale weight and the silver weight often disagree. Flatware sets and candlesticks are where that gap gets largest.

Solid pieces versus hollow knife handles

Forks, spoons, serving spoons and ladles in a sterling pattern are normally solid silver through and through, so their full weight counts. Knives are the exception. A sterling dinner knife almost always has a stainless steel blade set into a hollow sterling handle, and the handle is filled with cement, pitch or a similar compound to give it heft. Only the thin handle shell is silver.

The exact silver in a knife handle varies by pattern and maker, and the only precise way to find it is to take the knife apart, which destroys it. Buyers therefore estimate a small silver weight per knife instead of paying on the knife’s full weight.

Worked example: an eight-place flatware service

1. Weigh the solid pieces together. Suppose the forks and spoons come to 1,450 grams on a gram scale.
2. Value them at the $40 example spot: 1,450 × $1.1896 = $1,724.89.
3. Set the eight knives aside. Suppose they weigh 640 grams in total, and assume for this example that each handle holds 15 grams of sterling, a figure that really depends on the pattern.
4. Knife silver: 8 × 15 = 120 grams, worth about $142.75. Priced on full weight, they would have appeared to be worth $761.33.
5. Total melt value: about $1,867.64. An example offer at 75% of melt would be $1,400.73.

Pattern name, maker and monograms matter only if the set sells as tableware rather than as scrap. At the melt stage, weight and purity are all that count.

Weighted hollowware

Candlesticks, compotes, bud vases and some trophies stamped “weighted,” “reinforced” or “cement filled” are a thin sterling shell over a filler. A pair of weighted candlesticks that weigh 1,100 grams together might contain only a modest fraction of that in silver. Priced at full weight, that pair would appear to hold $1,308.54 of sterling at the example spot; a buyer will quote a small fraction of it, and the gap isn’t a lowball. Bowls, pitchers and trays without the word “weighted” are usually solid sheet silver and count at full weight once any felt, glass liners or wooden bases are removed.

Jewelry with stones

Take a sterling cuff with a turquoise stone that weighs 58 grams. If the stone and its backing are estimated at 9 grams, the silver weight is 49 grams, worth $58.29 at the example spot. An example offer of 70% of melt would be about $40.80. Handmade designer jewelry can sell for far more than its melt value to a collector, so scrap is the floor, not the only market.

Scrap offers on sterling and how to check them

Scrap buyers quote sterling as a percentage of melt, or as a price per gram or per pennyweight of sterling. Refining 925 costs money, and the buyer carries price risk until the metal is sold, so offers land below the melt value shown on this page. The percentage is usually better on large lots than on a single ring.

Turning an offer into a percentage

1. Ask whether the quote is per gram, per pennyweight or per troy ounce, and whether it is for sterling or for fine silver.
2. Convert it to the same unit as the melt figure at the top of this page.
3. Divide the offer by the melt value and multiply by 100.
4. Compare offers from more than one buyer on that same basis.

A quote of $1.40 per pennyweight of sterling, set against the $1.85 example melt value per pennyweight, is about 76% of melt. Quoted per gram, the same offer is $0.90, which looks like a very different number until you convert it.

What trims a sterling payout

• Non-silver parts: knife blades, steel pin stems on brooches, felt bottoms and glass liners.
• Pieces that fail an acid or electronic test despite a stamp, which happens with worn plate stamped on a base-metal core.
• Small lots, where fixed handling and assay costs take a bigger share.
• Heavy solder repairs on older hollowware, which lower the average purity slightly.

Silver and gold often travel in the same box of inherited jewelry. Weigh and price them separately, since gold is quoted at many times the value per gram; the current gold price is shown alongside silver on this site.

For guidance on comparing buyers, the where to sell gold page covers the same process for precious metals in general.

Coins are handled differently from sterling. Pre-1965 U.S. dimes, quarters and half dollars are 90% silver rather than 92.5%, and they are usually priced by face value; the junk silver calculator works those out.

For spot quotes and market background on fine silver itself, see the silver price page.

Profits from selling silver, sterling included, are reported to the IRS like other collectibles: long-term gains are taxed at your ordinary rate up to a 28% cap.