Silver Price Today – Live Chart and Calculator

Like gold, silver is traded in troy ounces on the international market, but the price per gram is far lower and the swings are bigger. That makes silver a more nervous market: if gold rises 1%, it's not unusual for silver to move 2%.

Silverware and cutlery

Danish silverware is typically stamped 830 or 925. A complete cutlery set can weigh several kilos, so the metal value adds up quickly — but remember that knife blades are often steel, and hollow items such as candlesticks may be filled with pitch or plaster, which doesn't count.

VAT on silver

Unlike investment gold, silver is subject to VAT when bought in Denmark. That means the price has to rise quite a bit before a purchase of physical silver breaks even on resale.

Silver appears in trade in several different fineness grades, and understanding the difference is essential to correctly assess an item's actual silver content. In Denmark, the legal minimum for silver is 800‰, meaning an item must contain at least 80 percent pure silver to be marketed as genuine silver at all. Older Danish silver items are often stamped 830 or 835, which were common standards in Danish silversmithing tradition during the 20th century, while 925, known as Sterling Silver, is today the most widespread international standard for jewellery and cutlery. Fine silver, 999‰, is typically used for investment bars and coins, where high and standardised purity is essential for trading.

The difference between these finenesses has a direct impact on calculating an item's silver value. A 100-gram item stamped 830 contains 83 grams of pure silver, while an equivalent 100-gram item stamped 925 contains 92.5 grams of pure silver — a difference of 9.5 grams, which for larger quantities can amount to a noticeable value difference. Because older Danish silver items are often stamped 830 or 835 without a clear 'Sterling' marking, it is important not to automatically assume 925 fineness when assessing inherited silver, cutlery sets, or antique jewellery.

It is also worth noting that some historical and foreign items may be stamped with other, less common finenesses, such as 900 or 950, or may not be stamped at all if manufactured before modern control schemes were introduced, or if they originate from countries with different regulations. In such cases, a professional assessment is often necessary to establish the actual silver content, as an incorrect assumption about fineness will directly affect any value calculation.

A frequent source of misunderstanding is the difference between solid silver and silver-plated items. Silver plating means a thin layer of silver has been applied to a core of another, typically cheaper metal, such as nickel silver (an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel with no actual silver content despite the name), brass, or stainless steel. The thin silver layer has a negligible metal value relative to the weight of the entire item and can rarely or never be priced according to silver's spot price in the same way as solid silver.

Danish consumers often encounter plated items in the form of older cutlery sets, candlesticks, or decorative objects, which may be marketed with terms such as 'plate' or 'silver-plated'. These terms specifically indicate that the item is not solid silver, and the Act on Precious Metals requires that such items not be marketed as genuine silver but clearly labelled as plated. If an item is not stamped with a fineness mark and is instead labelled 'plate' or similar, one should not expect any meaningful scrap value based on silver content.

For consumers wishing to assess whether an item is solid silver or plated, the decisive indicator is the presence of a correct fineness mark, such as 830, 925, or 999. If this is absent, or the item is explicitly marketed as plate or silver-plated, a value calculation should not be based on the silver's weight and spot price, since the actual silver quantity in such cases is typically too small to have any practical bearing on pricing.

As with gold, silver's international spot price is set in US dollars per troy ounce (31.1035 grams) and must be converted to Danish kroner per gram using the current exchange rate. The formula is the same as for gold: price per gram in DKK = (spot price USD per ounce ÷ 31.1035) × USD/DKK rate. The item's value is then calculated as grams × fineness (as a decimal) × price per gram of fine silver, before any dealer spread is deducted or added.

A purely hypothetical example for illustration: assume a spot price of 27 USD per ounce and a rate of 7.00 DKK per USD. The price per gram of fine silver would then be (27 ÷ 31.1035) × 7.00, equal to roughly 6.08 DKK per gram. If you then have a 200-gram item stamped 830, the pure silver content would be 166 grams, and the theoretical metal value would be 166 × 6.08, or about 1,009 DKK — before the dealer's spread. These figures are purely illustrative and do not reflect a current or expected price.

The spread between buy and sell price is often relatively larger for silver than for gold, because silver's lower price per gram makes fixed handling and refining costs proportionally more significant. This means a dealer often needs to apply a larger percentage deduction when buying silver items to cover costs, compared to an equivalent gold transaction. Consumers should therefore not expect silver prices to follow exactly the same percentage spread as gold prices, and should always obtain concrete quotes from several dealers.

Silver differs from gold in that a significant portion of global demand comes from industrial applications, including electronics, solar panels, and photography, in addition to jewellery, cutlery, and investment products. This can give the silver price a different dynamic than the gold price, since industrial demand can be influenced by factors not necessarily related to financial markets. For the individual consumer wishing to sell silver, this dynamic has no direct practical bearing on pricing a specific item, but it explains why the silver price has historically shown different fluctuation patterns than the gold price.

Jewellery and cutlery silver is priced, as described, according to fineness and weight, while industrial silver is typically traded in pure, refined forms without the same fineness variations seen in consumer products. It is therefore not relevant for the ordinary consumer to compare the price of a silver cutlery set directly with industrial silver's spot price without accounting for fineness, weight, and the fact that the cutlery must be melted down and refined before it can be used industrially or for investment.

When selling larger quantities of silver, such as complete cutlery sets or collections of silverware, it may be relevant to investigate whether there is antiquarian or design-related added value beyond the pure metal value before accepting an offer based solely on weight and fineness. In particular, older Danish silversmiths with recognised maker's marks may have items whose trading value as an antique or design object significantly exceeds the pure silver value, and this should be clarified before the item is potentially sold as scrap.