To Sell or to Keep? The Sterling Silverware Question
By Cathleen Hanson
Director, The International School of Protocol
These days, many people, myself included, are questioning the value of their sterling silver place settings. With silver prices soaring in the global market, a younger family member recently suggested to me that now is the time to sell. As of late January 2026, silver was trading at $110 per troy ounce with prices in recent weeks as much as $116 per ounce. Silver is used in 5G technology, solar panels, and electric vehicles which are in high demand.
In pure financial terms, a box of melted down sterling can bring in thousands of dollars.
Despite my younger relative’s suggestion, I cannot truly entertain the idea of getting rid of my silver. I have my grandmother’s silver—the Mayflower pattern from Baltimore’s Schofield Company. When I hold the knife and fork in my hands, I’m holding history. It’s a story of Baltimore. It’s the story of my grandparents’ romance. Married in 1933, my grandparents were hopeful about the future. He was a dashing young man from England, she was from Baltimore and had graduated from Goucher College before it was co-educational, before it moved to Towson. On Thursdays, Goucher students, fondly called, “The Goucher Girls,” by my grandmother, would have dinner with the dean. Like historically black colleges and universities and elite colleges, women’s colleges’ obligatory extra-curricular activities included instruction in the etiquette of dining.
When I notice the engraved “S,” on my grandmother’s silver I imagine like most couples in Baltimore, some of the pieces were acquired as wedding gifts, and the silver pattern was added to over time. The Schofield Company manufactured popular patterns like Baltimore Rose, Lily and Mayflower and less common ones like Elizabeth Taylor, Frabee and Talbot. Frank M. Schofield founded the company in 1903 on Pleasant Street and sold it in1967 to the Steiff Silver company.
When my daughter was young, I received a gift of a set of silver from my mother. My daughter was enamored with Greek mythology, and I had admired the scenes from mythology on the exquisitely engraved Mythologic pattern by Gorham. Created by French designer F. Antoine Heller who worked for Tiffany and Gorham, Mythologic is a multi-motif pattern with each type of utensil within the pattern having a different design. Tiffany’s Olympian pattern, also with scenes from classical mythology, and designed by Heller, has among the most intricate designs ever created for silverware. Heller’s beautiful Fountainebleu pattern appeared on the cover of Gorham’s catalogue in 1882.
Why Keep Your Silverware
Silver presents a tangible thread linking us to the past. When we hold a knife, fork or spoon, we feel the heft of each piece and the style of each utensil formed over years to fit comfortably in human hands.
A set table makes eating more of an event. Meals at the table anchor us not just to the past but to the present. We gather at the table to get to know one another. We learn how to listen. We commit to the moment. We also learn how to hold a knife and fork and how to be together and fully present. And we learn the importance of enjoying the food and giving thanks to people who prepared it. We take these rituals of dining with us as we leave the privacy of our homes and emerge into the larger world with so many opportunities to use our table manners– at job interviews, at dinners with friends, at meals with people from around the world.
My suggestion: Use your silverware. It’s history that you can feel. Art you can touch. I use my Mythologic pattern every day. It ties me to my mother and my daughter. I love the way it looks and how my figures wrap about each knife, fork and spoon. And, to answer the question you might be asking, yes I wash my silver in the dishwasher.