The unfortunate secret to finding REAL silver at the thrift store

so how do you find real silver at the thrift store unless you know what you're looking for it's real difficult I'm gonna show you how to find real silver and it's a little trickier than you might think now everybody talks about the magnet trick on how to find silver but it's got its issues too look at this spoon the top is non-magnetic to where the back of it is magnetic we know this spoon is not silver because it says stainless on the back at least this Fork looks silver but when you turn it over it says Triple pretty tricky they're always coming up with new ways to say it's not silver now we have two butter knives one is silver and one is not which one is real this one says is which means international silver and this one has some markings on it that don't have any words on it so here is the magnet trick I'm going to show you that it does work on silver but it also works on things that aren't silver well if you haven't guessed it yet you can see which one is silver because it is moving with the magnet but I would not rely on this test alone to verify if it's silver or not let me show you where the magnet test fails see this silver quarter we're able to move it now here's a copper one and you can see it move as well so I would not use this test alone because you can see copper has the same effect as real silver now if a quarter is 1964 and below it's real silver now if you turn the quarter on the side you can clearly see this one silver the other one has copper clad and of course everyone talks about the ring test listen to this this is a hundred percent pure silver now these coins are 90 percent silver and listen to what happens to the tone the amount of silver makes the tone change listen to this now these coins are not silver and you can hear a difference but you have to be on your game to hear this another test people use is a drop test you just list them to see if it sounds like silver well these are rich deep tough to distinguish if you're really good you can do it but when the shapes change the tone so what is the most effective way to find silver unfortunately it's you gotta know your markings for silver on this sterling silver knife you'll notice for maker marks the first marking is Cooper brothers and Sons the most important mark on this is the picture of the lion with its foot in the air now that is the symbol of sterling silver the other two marks one would be the location it was made and the letter represents the year it was made the letter Z on this one means 1943 so if you see a lion with its foot up the word sterling or stir or if you see the numbers ninety two point five or ninety two point five chances are you have sterling silver in your hand so don't rely on these tests to determine if it's silver or not you'll need to have knowledge of the years and the marks that represent silver now when I'm at the thrift store I'm also looking for other noble metals pewter will go for twenty dollars a pound so if I can buy a pound of pewter for two dollars and fifty cents while I'm out treasure hunting sure I'll do that well I hope you have found this video useful and if you did please give the video a thumbs up I'd appreciate it thank you

Channel: Live Free

Views: 489,515

Keywords: finding sterling silver at goodwill, live free, livefree youtube, finding silver at garage sales, livefree channel, livefree, finding silver at yard sales, finding silver at goodwill, live free channel, finding silver at flea markets, finding silver at thrift stores, live free youtube, live free youtube channel

Id: bbtshz48PGs

Length: 5min 2sec (302 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2018