Don't Pass Up the Medals and Tokens: Sterling Is Silver Too

Most bidders scroll right past them. A catalog is full of coins and bars, and then there's a lot like "sterling silver, 50 mm, 61.8 g," and the eye just slides off. It isn't a Maple. It isn't a bar. It doesn't look like bullion, so nobody prices it like bullion.

That's the opening. Medals, tokens, medallions, presentation pieces: a sterling item is 92.5% silver whatever you call it, and because it falls between two markets, it can hammer for less than the metal inside it. Here's how to price one, and the Canadian catch that decides whether it's actually a deal.

Why these lots go cheap

There are two kinds of buyers in the room, and a plain sterling medal, token, or medallion disappoints both.

The bullion buyers want recognizable metal: coins, bars, rounds, things with a stamped purity and an easy resale. A medal or a token isn't on their list, so they don't bid.

The collectors want history: the recipient, the institution, the engraving, the rarity. A worn piece with no famous name and no documented provenance doesn't move them either, so they don't bid hard.

So a lot that is genuinely almost two ounces of sterling can sell under its own melt value, because the people who wanted silver weren't looking, and the people who were looking didn't want silver. That's not a glitch. It's two markets missing each other, and the buyer running the metal math is the one standing in the gap.

The sterling math, in three steps

Sterling is 92.5% silver, marked .925, 925, STER, or STERLING. That number is the whole calculation. A sterling piece is not worth its full weight in silver. It's worth 92.5% of it.

Step 1. Multiply the gross weight by 0.925 to get pure silver content. Step 2. Divide by 31.1035, because silver is priced per troy ounce, not per gram and not per regular ounce. Step 3. Multiply by live spot to get the melt value.

In one line: gross weight x 0.925 ÷ 31.1035 x spot = melt.

A real lot, every number

This one came out of a real catalog run, and the timing is the point. It was the close of the auction, hammer prices final, and even then the tool had flagged about a dozen lots that sold under spot and dozens more under dealer retail, with well over a thousand dollars of savings left on the table for anyone doing the math. That's the room people walk away from, because nobody runs the numbers on every lot in the heat of a live sale. We didn't need the single cheapest lot, just a good one that fit the budget, and this sterling piece had the margin.

Here it is, a sterling piece from the 1900-1920 era, 50 mm across and 61.8 g, run through exactly that math. Silver spot on the day was CA$84.77, so you can check every figure below yourself.

• Gross weight: 61.8 g, which is 1.99 troy oz of metal
• Pure silver: 61.8 x 0.925 = 57.2 g, which is 1.8379 troy oz of actual silver
• Melt value: 1.8379 x CA$84.77 = CA$155.80
• Hammer: CA$90.00
• Buyer's premium (18%): CA$16.20
• Shipping: CA$15.00
• All-in before tax: CA$121.20

Before tax, that's CA$121.20 all-in. But this lot is taxable, because it's sterling (more on that below), so the pre-tax number isn't the one to bid against. You enter the rate that applies and the tool folds it in, the same way it folds in the premium and the shipping:

• GST (5%, on the CA$121.20): CA$6.06
• Real all-in: CA$127.26

Here's that row, tax and all, the same one the tool runs on every lot:

Click to enlarge

At CA$127.26 the tool grades it 18% under melt and 24% under retail of CA$168.26, and that number carries everything now: the 18% premium, the shipping, and the sales tax, not just the hammer.

We paid CA$127.26 for CA$155.80 worth of silver. Not "a fair price for a collectible." Under melt, on the metal alone, with every fee and the tax already counted. That works out to about CA$69 an ounce all-in, against a spot of CA$84.77.

Notice the two weights, because this is where people go wrong. The piece weighs 1.99 oz but contains 1.8379 oz of silver. Price it as two ounces and you have overpaid by 7.5% before you started. The 0.925 is not a rounding detail.

And notice the hammer against the all-in. The bid was CA$90. The real cost was CA$127.26 once the premium, shipping, and tax landed, which is more than a third on top of the bid. The hammer is never what you pay.

The Canadian catch: sterling is taxable, bullion isn't

Here's the part almost nobody factors in before they bid, and in Canada it's the difference between a deal and a wash.

Investment-grade bullion is exempt from GST/HST because of its purity: gold at 99.5%, silver at 99.9%, in bar, ingot, coin, or wafer form. Sterling is .925. It sits below the line, so it does not qualify. Buy a .999 silver bar and you pay no tax on it. Buy the same dollar value of silver in sterling form and you pay tax at checkout, purely because of what it's stamped. (Here's the full breakdown of what's exempt and what isn't.)

That changes how you bid. A tax you don't pay on bullion is a real cost you do pay on sterling, so a sterling lot has to hammer lower than a bullion lot to land in the same place. Run your ceiling with the tax in it, or you'll talk yourself into a lot that looked under melt and wasn't.

One more Canadian wrinkle, and it can move the number more than people expect: the rate depends on where the auction house is, not just where you are. The lot above was taxed at 5% because it came from an out-of-province house. The same lot from a seller in your own province could carry the full provincial rate on top, which is a very different all-in. So check the house's terms for the tax they actually charge before you set your ceiling, because the same hammer price is a different deal depending on who is billing it.

It cuts the other way too, and this is why the category is still worth your time: the discount on these lots is often bigger than the tax. Eighteen percent under melt survives a 5% tax comfortably. You just have to do the arithmetic before the bidding, not after.

The traps, in order of what they'll cost you

Plate is worth nothing. This is the big one. EPNS, silver plate, silverplate, German silver: all of these are base metal with a microscopically thin silver coating, and the silver content is not economically recoverable. It has no melt value worth calculating, and in a catalog photo it can look identical to solid sterling. If the description doesn't say solid, sterling, .925, or the equivalent, assume plate until proven otherwise.

Not all silver is sterling. Continental European pieces are frequently .800 or .835, meaning 80% or 83.5% silver. Coin silver is .900. Sterling is .925. They look the same and they are not worth the same, so put the actual fineness into the math, not a hopeful 0.925. If the catalog doesn't state a purity, that's a lot you flag, not a lot you assume.

Unmarked does not mean silver. A stamp is evidence, not proof, and no stamp at all is a reason for real caution. Here's how to check whether silver is genuine.

The stated weight may include things that aren't silver. Ribbons, clasps, suspension bars, pins, mounting hardware, and cases all add grams and contain no silver. If a lot quotes a gross weight for a piece "with ribbon and case," the silver is only part of that number. Value the silver, not the packaging.

Some pieces are worth far more than their metal. A named piece tied to an identifiable person, a rare issue, or something with documented provenance can be worth multiples of its silver to the right collector, and melting it destroys something that cannot be replaced. If a piece is named, rare, or documented, its value is not a metal question. Find out what you have before you treat it as scrap.

The upside you didn't pay for

One more thing about that lot, and it needs saying carefully.

Everything above is metal. The 18% under melt is a checkable, arithmetic fact: 1.8379 oz of silver, CA$84.77 spot, CA$155.80 of metal, CA$127.26 paid. You can run those numbers yourself and confirm them.

Now, a sterling medal or token from a century ago may also be worth something to a collector, above and beyond its silver. Some are. Many aren't. We're not going to put a number on this one, because that number would be a guess dressed up as a fact.

Here's the discipline, and it's the whole point: we bid on the metal. The ceiling was set on the silver, the silver is what justified the price, and if the piece turns out to carry collector value on top, that's upside we didn't pay for and didn't count on. Metal is the floor. Anything above it is free. Bid that way and you're never wrong twice, because the worst case is you own silver you bought under melt.

Where the math stops

That last point deserves saying plainly, because it's the line we hold everywhere.

The tool grades metal. It tells you what the silver in a lot is worth against live spot and against dealer retail, and that is all it claims to do. It does not price history, rarity, or whose name is on the back. So when we say a lot came in 18% under melt, that's a metal statement, checked cold. What an object is worth as a piece of someone's past is a different question with a different answer, and it belongs to people who study these things, not to a pricing engine.

Keeping those two apart is the whole discipline. The metal number is knowable. The history is a judgment. Blur them and you'll talk yourself into a bad decision in one direction or the other.

The short version

Don't scroll past the medals, tokens, and medallions. Sterling is 92.5% silver whatever the object is called, and these lots routinely go under melt because the bullion buyers ignore them and the collectors aren't excited by them. Multiply the gross weight by 0.925, divide by 31.1035, multiply by spot, and price your all-in against that, with the sales tax in it, because sterling doesn't get the exemption that bullion does. Watch for plate, which is worthless, for purities that aren't sterling, and for non-silver weight padding the listing. And leave the named and the rare alone. Bid on the metal, and let any collector value be a bonus you didn't pay for. Everything else is just silver nobody bothered to weigh.

Run a lot through Quick Check and it does the sterling math for you: pure content, melt, and all-in against live spot and dealer retail, before you bid. (New to the terms? The glossary's here. And here's how to read a whole catalog.)