Antique Silver Goblets between £0 and £0
A stemmed silver drinking cup on a foot, made for wine at table, for communion at the altar and for handing over as a prize.
What Are Antique Silver Goblets?
The shape borrows from the glass wine cup and translates it into metal: a bowl on a stem and spreading foot, plain or engraved. The same form served three jobs. It held wine, it served as communion plate, and it was engraved and presented as a trophy. That is why one heading covers goblets, chalices, cups and trophy cups.
The piece you're most likely to meet is a single Victorian sterling wine goblet, hallmarked, with the year and the height in the title: an eight-inch goblet dated 1876, say. Half the titles on Sellingantiques say sterling, and a third say wine. Victorian listings are the backbone of the category, with Edwardian a distant second and Georgian behind that.
Alongside the solid silver sits a steady minority in Old Sheffield plate and later electroplate, roughly a tenth of the listings and often offered in pairs. The plated goblets reach back to around 1780, earlier than most of the sterling. Church and religious cups are about one in seven, taking in communion chalices along with Kiddush and Pesach cups.
The dated field runs from 1750 to 1960, and a good many entries are brackets rather than years: 19th Century, Georgian, 1800s. Seventeen listings sit in the 1960s, so mid-century sterling wine goblets, coupes and cocktail barware are a real seam rather than a stray. About 38 goblets come to market in a year across 54 different dealers.
Where The Range Splits
Metal comes first. Sterling sits toward the top and the plated and Old Sheffield plated pieces sit low in the range, whatever their age. After that it's bulk: titles quote heights from about five inches to twelve and a half, and weights from under 60g for a small mid-century cup to over a kilogram for the heaviest Georgian one in the archive. Tall and heavy pulls upward.
Decoration separates the plain from the worked. Fern engraving, bright-cut work, chasing with pineapples and flowers, embossing, and figural subjects such as birds, butterflies, soldiers and horses all lift a goblet above the undecorated bowl. Gilt interiors and parcel gilding turn up in a few titles rather than as a habit of the form.
Two things move a piece further. One is a name and an occasion: regatta and boat club trophies, a football trophy, a cricket presentation, a stallion prize, an automobile club cup, all engraved with what they were won for, and these sit well above plain examples. The other is multiples. Pairs, sets of six tot cups and cased sets stand above singles, as do the Georgian and 18th-century datings against the later ones.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for silver goblets between £0 and £0, 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.
The highest price in the last year on Sellingantiques went to a pair of Victorian Arts and Crafts goblets, hallmarked London 1871, sold in April 2026.
The Antique Silver Goblets between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Sterling
- The British solid silver standard, and the word that separates solid silver from plated. It appears in half the titles in this category.
- Old Sheffield plate
- Silver fused onto copper, the pre-electroplate method. Titles saying Sheffield plated are mostly Georgian and early 19th-century goblets, often sold in pairs.
- Chalice
- Used for church communion cups and also, loosely, as a plain synonym for goblet. It shows up in around one title in seven.
- Tot cup
- A miniature goblet for spirits, a few inches tall, sometimes offered in sets of six.
- Loving cup
- A cup of goblet form with two handles, one either side of the bowl.
- Wager cup
- A novelty with two bowls, one inverted as the foot. It appears only a handful of times across the whole archive, and near the top of the range when it does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are silver goblets usually sold singly or in pairs?
Single goblets dominate the listings, described with one year and one height. The typical entry is one Victorian sterling wine goblet, hallmarked and dated.
Pairs and sets do appear. Seventeen titles say pair, and the Old Sheffield plated goblets in particular turn up two at a time. Sets of six tot cups and cased sets also show up, and they sit above single examples.
What period do most of them come from?
Victorian is the largest block by a clear margin, with Edwardian second and Georgian third. The dated field as a whole runs from 1750 to 1960.
Only some listings carry a clean year. The rest use brackets such as 19th Century, 18th Century or 1800s, so a period label in the dated field is often a range rather than a hallmark year, even where the title itself quotes an exact date.
Do plated goblets appear alongside solid silver ones?
They do, side by side under the same heading. About a tenth of titles say plated, and Old Sheffield plate is a persistent minority.
The plated examples are often the older ones. Sampled Old Sheffield plated wine goblets run from around 1780 to 1840, reaching back earlier than most of the sterling in the category.
How big are antique silver goblets?
Heights quoted in titles stretch from miniature tot cups of a few inches to a twelve and a half inch Victorian wine goblet, the tallest recorded on Sellingantiques.
Weights are quoted in a good many titles too, from about 58g for a small mid-century cup up past a kilogram for the largest Georgian gilt cup in the samples. Larger and heavier sits at the upper end.
Why are trophies and chalices in this category?
Because they share the shape. The stemmed cup on a foot was made as a wine vessel, as communion plate and as a presentation prize, so the trade sells all three under one heading.
Communion and religious cups account for about one in seven listings, including Kiddush and Pesach cups. Trophies run under a tenth, engraved with regattas, boat clubs, football, shooting and stallion prizes.
Are any non-British goblets listed?
Rarely. Chinese export, Anglo-Indian, Kutch Indian, American, German, Russian Judaica, Czech and Irish pieces each appear only once or twice.
Assay names in titles are mostly London, Sheffield and Birmingham. Exeter and Edinburgh are the scarce ones, each turning up only once or twice.