One Man's Trash... Silverware

You know what they say about one man's trash?  Well, it's true.  There are treasures to be found.  And, I am fortunate enough to have a husband who inherited a nose for a good deal, the ability to haggle, and the good judgement to know what's worth haggling over (and what's better off left on the table).  We have great fun together sniffing out deals.  And we find them all over- yard sales (he calls them rummage sales), flea markets, antique stores, and thrift markets.   And add to that a ton of additional finds that my father-in-law scopes out for us.  (That's where my husband gets it from.)  We have put together quite the collection of "treasures" over our years together. 

So I thought it might be fun to share with you all some of our latest and greatest finds in this new thread I will be calling "One Man's Trash".  So whenever you see that in the title of a post, just know that's what it's about.  

Today, I will start us off with a box of ratty old silverware we picked up at a yard sale a couple of weekends ago.  The box was marked $10, and I believe my hubby talked her into $5 for the whole lot.  You can see here that this silver is pretty tarnished and in need of some polishing.  No worries.  I can work on that.  I really do like the pattern on this silver.  I did some checking and found that this pattern is just silver-plated, so it's not worth a ton of money, but it will clean up nicely and I will tuck it away for a rainy day. 

But there's more to this story.  Mixed into my $5 box of silverware was this big beautiful serving piece.  I noticed it didn't match the pattern of the rest of the pieces, so I picked it up and starting looking at it more closely.  It is clearly marked "Sterling" on the back side of the handle.  I may not know much about these things, but I do know that is quite different from silver-plated pieces.  So I did a little research on this piece, and it turns out that this one is actually solid sterling silver.  And at today's market rate for silver, it would be valued between $50 - $60 if we wanted to sell it just for the metal.  WOW!!!  

Now, we aren't planning to sell it.  In fact, I rather like it and I love that the value of this one piece alone could pay for the rest of the set 10 times over.  Now that's a deal worth making.  I would say this one definitely turned into quite the treasure.