I have around 10 pounds of pure silver powder I would like to sell. How much do you think its worth? From Robin in Cape Girardeau, Missouri

Hi Robin,

To determine the value of your silver powder, you would first need to know how pure the silver is.  For instance, fine silver is 99.9% silver, but if your silver powder contains other ingredients, then it would not be as valuable, assuming the other ingredients are not some other highly precious metal like gold or platinum.

If your silver powder is marked 999 silver anywhere on the container or label, then it is most likely 99.9 % fine silver and you can estimate its value by converting your 10 pounds into 145.833 troy ounces.  (Please note that Silver commodity prices are measured in Troy ounces and not the standard avoirdupois ounces that most Americans think of when they see the word ounce.  Many people mistakenly estimate silver value by multiplying standard avoirdupois ounces by the price per ounce and get a higher value.)

Once you have your weight converted into troy ounces, you can multiply this number by the silver exchange rate published on sites like CNN Money http://money.cnn.com/data/commodities/index.html. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s assume that the price was $18 per troy ounce.  Given this, the market value of your silver would be about $2,625.

Of course, this price fluctuates and as a refiner, we still would need to process the silver and find a buyer for this particular material so we typically pay 75% of the silver value by weight but could pay up 90% depending on the fine silver content of your powder. If it has no markings, we will have to run additional analytical tests to determine how much silver material is available to extract. Not only will this require more time to refine, but the silver may a much lower purity than the 99.9% used in our example.

We would advise that you send us a small sample of the silver powder so that we can measure its purity and provide a more accurate estimate.