Collecting Vintage Flatware

I’ve been collecting mismatched sterling silver flatware for only a short time. I have learned in doing a little research that flatware was more specific in the old days. There were spoons for cream soups, consommé, dessert spoons, iced tea spoons, etc. 

What I do is try to keep things to about the same length for each piece. Soup spoons (often called Dessert Spoons), for instance, come with round bowls or oval bowls. Pick one.

Regular forks come in lunch size (7″) or dinner size (7.5″). Salad/Dessert forks come with one wide tine or 4 equal sized tines.

Antique knives come with straight, wide blades or more modern contoured blades.

I personally like a hodgepodge mix. Something special would be old monogramming, try to get things that haven’t had the monogramming erased.

Learn to recognize the difference between sterling silver and silver-plated.

On a recent antiquing adventure I discovered some extremely cheap and very nice vintage flatware. I actually sat on the floor of this antique mall and rummaged through the baskets of flatware like a kid in a toy store. The old man that ran the place even come to check on me a few times to see what I had found.

I usually try to keep away from the big antique malls in my area for flatware because they seem to ask way more than what I'm willing to pay.

This time I got lucky.

They had them for as cheap as $ .25 and upwards of $14 per piece. I chose the less expensive this time because I'm going to be making spoon rings out of them and use them for other crafting. I will be posting my tutorial on them upon completion.

This is a sampling of what I actually saw. WOW, right?