

I’m expecting to receive a check for about $800. I sent it to Midwest Refineries, and let them know to look for it in Thursday’s mail. Shipping was $5.35, and insurance was $12.00. So today, I packaged up the sterling in a well-insured, USPS flat rate box.

They were answered quickly and accurately by a guy with reasonable grammar and an email address that matched the company’s domain name. They have a circa-1993 website, which may actually be a good thing: what does a metals recycling company need a slick website for? Reviews were reasonable, and their payout is a more reasonable 90% of the market price of silver. Some more online research led me to another buyer, this place called “Midwest Refineries” in Michigan. Most of them were quoting a payout of only about $15 per ounce for the silver – half the market price. Many of them had bad marks on their Better Business Bureau record when I looked them up, or bad reviews. After the sorting process, I was left with only 33.5 ounces of actual sterling, when weighed on a postal scale.īut there was still a hurdle to clear: who would actually buy the silver? All of the local dealers sounded a bit shifty to me. You’ve got your knives on the left, sterling silver in the middle, and silver plated stuff on the right. Sterling silver: Only the stuff in the center is saleable When you add all this up, I was left with three piles, shown in this picture: This was done for functional reasons, since silver is too soft to make a good knife. There is one additional complication: even in a sterling silver set, the knives are usually made with stainless steel blades, and silver-plated handles.

She has no use for it, and it’s just taking up space. After each use, it would become oxidized and require meticulous polishing with special fluids.įast forwarding 20 years, this sterling silver has been sitting in a drawer in GMM’s house unused for longer than some of us have been alive. It was fancy (although impractical) stuff which we occasionally used for big holiday dinners when I was a kid. One of these was a complete set of sterling silver flatware. Many years ago, her own parents passed on, leaving various antique things in their estate. Assuming you’ve already got enough stuff yourself, this can require some serious strategy to deal with properly.Īs a case-in-point, let’s take my dear Mum – the same Grandma Money Mustache who was featured in the Cost-Effective Renovations article. But this natural progression of life also brings with it some practical considerations: a whole load of material stuff that gets passed on from one generation to the next. I love the many positive aspects of a family that shares its stories and values from one generation to the next. That means our parents are even older, and our grandparents – if they’re still around – are sagely pieces of living history. So, some of us Mustachians are getting pretty old.
