A friend of mine is a jeweller, and buys .925 coins, and casts animal figures from that metal.
He has his own sponsors mark and has them assayed and stamped.
He put a reasonable profit on them and took them to shows.
They hardly sold. People would pick them up, weigh them in their hands, agree with him that it was the weight stated on the label,
then not buy them because it was not possible to buy that amount of .925 silver for that price, clearly.....
So he doubled the price. They flew off the stall.
It's amazing sometimes how valuable people think silver is.
"The best silver", that people bring out to impress, is often a hideous set of plated tat, with maybe a fiver's worth of silver on it's surfaces,
ready to be zealously polished off....