You won’t make a fortune from this. The items have historical and sentimental value…
There’s virtually no sterling silver in these. This is EPNS - electroplated nickel silver (despite its name, nickel silver contains no silver). There’s no extractable precious metal.
Produced by the millions. At least these were good makers, so the stuff is well-made and durable. Use it, toss it in the dishwasher.
Always good to find a partial set of silver plate in good condition.
Here’s some background on your makers:
I very rarely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Jeff, but please don’t chuck it in the dishwasher. Stuffed knives contain cement, gypsum, lead or resin in their handles and the heat will expand the contents and extrude the blades.
Wash by hand and dry. If you wish to make them shiny, and you will need to if you are going to use them, take an impregnated silver cloth and polish them up.
Dishwashers abrade the few microns of silver plate and expose the nickel silver underneath.
As to value: Good stainless steel blades in an original handle, and little or no history of wear, I would put them on at C$15 a piece. Round out the set and find a nice silver box and you can jump that up to C$20.
The demand for good vintage plate is driven by two factors; first the cost of insuring sterling now is so high people are simply banking the stuff and using good plate for everyday lunches etc and secondly its multiplicity of patterns means it is actually very difficult to find exact matches.
There are websites that are basically dating services for silver pattern and the price they ask seem quite bold until you walk into a store selling new plate and realize labor costs have driven their prices through the roof.
CRWW
I don’t know anyone under the age of 70 who would bother with this. They buy decent looking stainless and just get on with their lives. Anything that can’t go in the dishwasher is banished. No silver, no EPNS, no crystal, no china. They’ll even put wooden-handled kitchen knives into the Bosch. Does it damage the wood? Yes, eventually. Then they throw them out and buy new ones.
They will, however, pamper pieces of MCM furniture that’s made out of thin plywood with an unrepairable veneer over it. Go figure. ![]()
“The proof,” as someone once said, “is in the pudding”:
Here’s the pudding for Dixon flatware over the past decade.
So some sets sold at prices which had I paid attention I would have paid and others went higher.
Now look at flatware prices generally, especially where recognized names are involved. Suddenly we’re in the thousands.
And remember these prices are all 50% of what Ebay sellers ask.
So someone is paying attention, unless antique buyers have taken up donating cash to auction houses.
But none of this either adds to or distracts from my central point: do not “toss” stuffed knives or plated silver into dishwashers and ignore any advice that urges you do so.
A point which you concede in order to make your case that nobody you know uses anything but stainless steel unless they’re over 70.
Most of my customers are in their thirties or forties. And it is their penchant for silver over base metal and not paying huge insurance premiums I am reporting on.
CRWW
The Villeroy and Boch forks are stainless steel.
Actually, I’m not sure anyone said that. It’s a distortion of a (probably 17th c) maxim, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the tasting”. Proof meaning test, a definition that still exists in that one still proofs yeast to see if it is still viable. Ergo, the test of the jumble of dried fruits, meat, entrails and God knows what is in the eating of it, hopefully with a sturdy sterling silver spoon.
… and an even sturdier constitution.





