Pricing/selling dishes

November 6, 2019 6:23 AM

A friend of mine is looking to price/sell her wedding china. It's an unused 12 place set of Tiffany band china: soup bowl, small plate, dinner plate, sugar bowl and creamer, serving platter, vegetable dish, soup tureen, coffee pot, twelve cups and saucers. (Either she will sell it or her STBX will buy out her half. She currently has an offer that feels lowball, $1200 for the set.) Where in the NYC metro area can she sell this? She also has silver utensils, so both at once would be a bonus.
posted by jeather to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

Four or five years ago I bought a set of china for resale. I paid about $1000 for it, tried for a year to resell it at a profit, finally ended up breaking it up and selling it in small sets (cup and saucer, four plates, etc) on ebay. Eventually made my money back. In other words, china is not in a good way market-wise right now. Given that your friend didn't pay for the set, my advice would be to grab the $1200 and be happy.
You don't indicate if the silver is plate or sterling.
If it's plate, same story. You can barely give it away.
If the silver is sterling, different story. Sterling is always worth some effort.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 6:43 AM on November 6, 2019 [15 favorites]

Replacements Ltd. buys and sells china, so it might be worth inquiring.
posted by MelissaSimon at 6:48 AM on November 6, 2019 [6 favorites]

Has she tried selling to Replacements Limited?
posted by JawnBigboote at 6:51 AM on November 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

$1200 sounds pretty good to me. There is a lot of gently used china for sale, on ebay and elsewhere, and unless it's a very rare or collectible pattern it doesn't mean much (even Tiffany).

Put it this way: would she rather have $1200, or some china that she didn't pay for and doesn't want?
posted by epanalepsis at 7:57 AM on November 6, 2019 [7 favorites]

Collectable items like that can be worth a lot in theory but only if you're willing to wait some time for someone interested in the specific thing you have to come along.

How much is it worth to STBX? And how long until your friend must make a decision?
posted by Candleman at 8:16 AM on November 6, 2019

With Boomers dying and downsizing, there is a glut in the china/crystal/silver market right now. Their kids don't want fussy stuff and already have their own from their wedding, only children of only children have multiple sets being offered from grandparents... there's just a ton of it floating around. She's probably not going to find a better price than that anywhere.
posted by timepiece at 8:13 AM on November 7, 2019

One useful way to look at pricing is to put all the relevant info in an Ebay search and then go down the filters on the left side and click "sold/completed listings". I use it all the time to help determine if I should list sterling items or send them to the refiner.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:22 PM on November 7, 2019