Do you have silver jewellery, flatware, coins, or other valuables that you’re looking to sell in Toronto? Selling silver valuables is a great way to raise some extra funds, build up your emergency savings, start investing, or contribute to a major cost like a wedding or a down payment for a home.
Whatever your financial goal, you always want to make sure you get the best possible price when you decide to part with valuables like jewellery or silver coins. These strategies can help you make sure you get a better deal when selling your silver, gold, and other valuables.
#1 Separate Silver Belongings by Purity
The first thing you want to do is sort your jewellery and valuables by their silver purity. When it comes to belongings like coins or flatware, this might be presented as a percentage. With jewellery, it will more commonly be presented in karats.
Karats refer to parts per 24 and correspond directly to a percentage. For example, 22-carat silver is 91.6% pure silver or 22 parts per 24.
You want to separate belongings with different purities before you take them in to get an estimate. While a reputable silver buyer won’t do this, some may try to lump all of your silver together and pay by weight, according to the lowest purity you bring in. Keep objects of a different fineness separate to avoid this possibility.
If you are not sure what the purity of a piece is, check for a hallmark. This should be a small stamp on the piece with key information about it.
#2 Get Estimates and Compare Quotes
Living in the GTA, you have a lot of options when it comes to potential buyers. The top silver buyers in Toronto should all be willing to provide you with a quote after you bring in your silver jewellery and heirlooms.
It is fairly standard practice to take your valuables to multiple potential buyers. Take all of their quotes into consideration and sell to the buyers who offer the most favourable price.
In Toronto, you’ve no doubt seen or heard ads for gold and silver buyers on TV, the radio, bus stops, and online. One option available is Muzeum, the storefront for the Great Canadian Roadshow, which tours across Canada, offering free evaluations of collectibles and heirlooms. The Great Canadian Roadshow has also paid out $25,000,000 over the years to Canadians for collectibles. Centrally located in Yorkville, it’s one of many options you have for selling silver.
#3 Give Yourself Plenty of Time
One of the best ways to make sure you get a better price for your silver is to give yourself plenty of time. The price of silver on the market fluctuates, and ideally, you want to sell it for more than what you paid for it. If you can wait for better silver market conditions, you can make more than you might otherwise.
When you have more time, you can also spend more time comparing buyers and getting estimates. When you’re trying to sell silver in a hurry, you’re more likely to accept the first offer you get.
If you can, take your time to get plenty of quotes and consider your options.
#4 Watch Market Conditions
Markets can be complicated, but there are several factors that can impact the price of silver. If you keep your eye on the market, waiting for the right time to sell, there are some trends to watch, even though markets are notoriously difficult to predict.
The first factor to watch is what stock markets are doing. About half of all silver demand comes from investors, who tend to treat silver as a cousin to gold. Silver prices can be driven heavily by investor sentiment, which tends to treat precious metals as a safe haven during times of high stock market volatility.
The next factor is gold prices. Gold and silver prices tend to be closely connected. When gold prices go up, you can often expect silver prices to follow, usually with even larger price gains. Keep in mind that silver tends to be more volatile, so its prices can also fall faster than gold’s.
Finally, roughly half of all silver demand comes from industrial manufacturing. It’s widely used in electronics, including computers, smartphones, cars, and appliances. High demand from those sectors has led to greater demand for silver than new supply, which has led to high prices in recent years.
If you’re not in a rush to sell your silver collection, you may be able to wait and watch the market.
#5 Don’t Clean Silver Items Before Selling Them
One of the biggest mistakes silver sellers make is that they think cleaning their items will make them sell for more. This is almost never the case whether you’re selling jewellery, coins, silver flatware, or other objects made from the precious metal.
For the most part, cleaning silver before you sell only unnecessarily puts it at risk. Usually, broken or unwanted silver jewellery and flatware will wind up being melted down and recycled for other purposes. The condition usually doesn’t matter, and some tarnish won’t affect the price.
The other face of that coin is that you could have a real collectible on your hand. While it’s good to manage your expectations, if you have silver that could be considered vintage or antique, it might be valuable enough to be resold rather than melted down. In this case, you could actually harm the resale value of the piece by attempting to clean it.
It almost always makes sense to leave it be rather than risk a cleaning attempt.
You want to make the most of it when you sell valuables like silver jewellery or flatware. Take your time, compare quotes, watch market conditions, and separate belongings according to their silver purity. Silver bullion buyers and jewellery buyers are going to be your best bets. Fortunately, there are tons of silver buyers in Toronto, and you should be able to find competitive quotes. Last but not least, don’t risk damaging silver by trying to clean it, as you will most likely wind up hurting its value.
