Antique Silver Boxes
Small lidded silver containers made to keep snuff, pills, stamps, rings and trinkets dry, clean or out of sight.
Antique Silver Boxes
The box you'll meet most often is a small English hallmarked sterling trinket or jewellery box of the Victorian to Edwardian decades, named in the title by its assay office and date. "Trinket" is the commonest object word in the category, with "jewellery" behind it, and the heart is the signature outline: 179 titles mention a heart, 105 of them "heart shaped", used for pill boxes, ring boxes and trinket boxes alike.
Four other seams run through the listings. Snuff, pill and tobacco boxes make up about a quarter, taking in vinaigrettes, patch boxes and squeeze-action tobacco boxes. Silver mounted on another material accounts for a fifth or so, on tortoiseshell, glass, agate, porcelain, mother of pearl, shagreen and horn. Silver plate is a smaller group, chiefly biscuit boxes in folding, drum and cut-glass forms.
The fifth group is the box as packaging rather than the object: napkin rings, spoons, salts and christening sets in their original cases, close to a tenth of the listings. Worth knowing before you read a title, since "boxed" describes the case and not the silver inside it.
Dates supplied by dealers run from 1700 to 1960, with the bulk between the 1890s and the 1930s. Georgian is a real presence but a smaller one, and eighteenth-century pieces appear only as isolated examples. Birmingham dominates the assay offices, with Chester and London close together behind it. Around 425 of these boxes are listed in a year on Sellingantiques, handled by 147 different dealers.
Where The Range Splits
Size and weight do most of the sorting. Titles quote grams and inches, and the bottom of the range is a 12g or 24g pill box a couple of inches across. Higher up sit table and dressing-table boxes of 204g, 262g, 346g and one enamelled pot at 466g, with trinket boxes running five to eight inches. "Large" appears in 171 titles.
Decoration is the second divide. Guilloche enamel lids, pique tortoiseshell, castle-top, battle-scene, cherub and hunting-scene panels recur in the dearer end, while "completely plain" and "engine turned" describe the simpler ones. Sterling sits above plate, and the plated listings cluster in the biscuit boxes.
A maker's or retailer's name in the title pushes a box upward; the cheapest are simply "antique silver box" with nothing attached. Purpose does the same. Stamp boxes, string boxes, bougie boxes, spice boxes, pyxes and sovereign cases turn up in small numbers and sit above the generic trinket box, along with one-offs like a stamp-roll pillar box, a silver walnut and a terrapin snuff box.
Antique Silver Boxes Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for silver boxes, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Around 425 antique silver boxes are listed on Sellingantiques each year, from 147 different dealers.
William Comyns·Deakin & Francis·Mappin & Webb·Walker & Hall·Levi & Salaman·Henry Matthews·Synyer & Beddoes·Samuel Pemberton·Asprey·Fenton Brothers·Sampson Mordan·William Hutton·Horton & Allday·Elkington & Co·George Unite
The Antique Silver Boxes Glossary
- Sterling or solid silver
- The metal is silver of standard fineness rather than plated. "Sterling" appears in over a thousand titles in this category, "solid" in a few hundred.
- Silver plated
- Base metal with a silver coating. Around 207 titles say so, and most of those are biscuit boxes.
- Assay office
- The town whose mark carries the date. Birmingham leads by more than two to one, then Chester, London and Sheffield.
- Trinket box
- The trade's term for a small lidded dressing-table box, and the single commonest object word in the category.
- Guilloche enamel
- Translucent enamel over an engine-turned ground, nearly always on the lid, concentrated in the 1900s to 1930s.
- Repoussé
- Decoration raised from behind, the technique behind the floral and cherub lids that recur throughout.
Antique Silver Boxes: Frequently Asked Questions
What is a vinaigrette?
A tiny box with a pierced grille set inside the lid, made to hold a sponge soaked in scented vinegar.
They sit within the snuff and pill box group, which accounts for about a quarter of the category, alongside patch boxes and squeeze-action tobacco boxes.
Are these boxes mostly Georgian?
No. Georgian runs to around 206 listings against 681 described as Edwardian and 622 as Victorian.
The bulk of the dated pieces fall between the 1890s and the 1930s. A tail of mid-twentieth-century hallmarks, into the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, sits inside the same category.
Which assay office turns up most?
Birmingham, by a clear margin: 312 titles name it, against 135 for Chester and 133 for London.
Sheffield appears too. Scottish provincial marks such as Aberdeen and Edinburgh show up only once in a blue moon.
Why do some listings say boxed rather than box?
Because the box is the packaging. Close to a tenth of the listings are silver objects supplied in their original case: napkin rings, spoons, salts, christening sets and cutlery.
Titles like "Pair of Silver Napkin Rings in Original Boxes" belong to that group rather than to the boxes proper.
What does silver mounted on another material mean?
Silver used as a lid, rim or mount over a body of something else. Tortoiseshell and glass are the commonest, with agate, porcelain, mother of pearl, shagreen and horn also appearing.
This accounts for a fifth or so of listings, and it overlaps the trinket and snuff groups rather than sitting apart from them.
Do non-British boxes appear in this category?
They do, in small numbers. Indian and Ceylon table boxes, German Hanau work, Dutch, Danish, Austrian, Swedish, Belgian, French and Italian pieces all turn up.
Chinese export, Indo-Chinese and Japanese mixed-metal boxes appear as well, each a handful at most against the English hallmarked bulk.