A tea and coffee service from 1824 which was brought into Michael Bloomstein Precious Metals. Weighing 101 troy ounces, its current scrap value was over £4700.
The spot price for silver in the UK rose above £50 per troy ounce for the first time on December 22, before then peaking at over £57 on December 29. The price rally has continued into 2026 prompting many items to be scrapped as precious metal traders returned to work on January 5.
The price of silver has effectively doubled over the last six months. While many pieces of Victorian silver such as flatware, coffee pots and trophies have long been sold for scrap, more and more Georgian works including snuffboxes, vesta cases and canteens are now heading for the melt.
Even low-value items with only a small silver content, such as dressing table sets (which have sheet silver to the brushes and mirrors), shoe horns and button hooks are being destroyed as the metal is removed.
Larger numbers of silver lots at auction are also failing to fetch any more than their scrap value. While selling rates are high, many vendors would do better selling directly for scrap rather than incurring saleroom fees.
‘Never known it so busy’
Brighton-based precious metals dealer Michael Bloomstein said the amount of goods coming in to be scrapped was unprecedented. “I’ve never known it so busy” he said.
“The phone didn’t stop ringing over Christmas and we’ve been inundated since we reopened this week. Some people are coming in with their entire stock.”
With Bloomstein currently offering a price of £46.77 per troy ounce, he has received items such as a George IV silver tea and coffee service marked for London 1824 which is now worth £4723.77 in scrap thanks to its overall weight of 101 ounces.
Precious metal dealer Michael Bloomstein. His family has been dealing in silver for four generations.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to quote and difficult to know what to offload. If the price keeps going up maybe it’s better to keep some things back? I like to keep hold of interesting items in any case, as one day such antiques might have an increased rarity value with so much being scrapped.
“Equally there could well be a market correction very soon, but who knows? Back in the Bunker Hunt days [when the price of silver dramatically rose and then collapsed in 1980] it was really one man’s actions that caused a big swing. Now there seems to be so many different factors supporting the high prices that it feels more like proper trading.”
As well as silver, the price of gold hit a record high over the Christmas holiday, with the gold fix reaching over £3300 on December 29. Plenty of gold jewellery and watches, especially those with a higher carat, are being consigned in larger quantities and are destined for the melting pot.
Back in October, strong rises in gold and silver led to fears that a market correction would leave bullion traders unable to cover their futures, something exacerbated by supply of physical silver becoming increasingly squeezed. Some precious metals dealers therefore temporarily stopped quoting rates and suspended trading. However the fact that the high prices have now been sustained for a prolonged period has meant normal trading conditions have mostly resumed.
Unprecedented times
The reason for the current rise in prices relates to several economic and geopolitical factors coinciding to push up the price of precious metals. These include the historic demand for gold and silver in times of instability, the general economic uncertainty with concerns over tariffs and a potential AI bubble on the stock market, expectations of further falls in interest rates in the US and central banks purchasing gold in greater bulk.
With regard to silver, its function as a conductive layer in solar-power cells in particular has led China to buy up large amounts of the metal – over 50% of the world’s available supply according to some reports. It recently introduced an export-licensing system to effectively restrict exports of refined silver which would appear to have increased the price of silver internationally.
With such high prices attracting ever more consignments for scrap, Bloomstein said that he and his staff were “all quite exhausted”.
“So many people were waiting to come in when we reopened, we had to put a sign on the door as we couldn’t fit any more customers in the premises. I’ve never had to do that before.”
