Beware! buying .925 sterling silver

Be very carefull!
Who in the world would of thought that someone would ever try to fake .925 sterling silver? But they do. My wife and I use to and still do run a small booth at a local flea market. We are always looking for things we can buy and sell. My wife likes jewerly, and I like cars. After searching for a long time, we found someone (alot of sellers actually)selling with GREAT deals on sterling silver, rings, bracelets and necklaces. Being that are ingee couldnt support a huge about of gold, or platinum items, we started buying the .925 sterling silver items. And let me just say, how impressed and happy we we're when we received them. BUT.....how sorely mistaken we truely were. See something you 1st have to understand about sterling silver is that people don't tend to even think to check them to see if they are real. And 6 out of the 6 jewerly stores, and 4 out of 4 pawn shops, we called, or went to wouldnt even "waste" the time to check it as well. It was only after several of my friends, seeing the massive amounts of sterling silver we were starting topile upbegan to ask questions. At this point, we had not sold any of them, and I am so thankfull we didn't! We were still waiting on all the items to gee in, before setting up to sell them. Thanks to a very close friend, who always use to collect jewerly he took a very close look at my stuff and claimed out right it was fake. THE JEWERLY WAS CLEARLY MARKED.....925, and it WAS CLEARED STATED in the add we bought it from it was .925 sterling silver. What it was in reality was crome coated lead. I litterly had some very good friends of mine arguing back in forth with each other with the items in hand saying it was real. And then listing several reasons it was. And again the "experts" wouldn't even take the time to test my jewerly. Thank God, aold businessfriend of mine runs a jewerly store, and took the time to test it. Or else I could of easily ruined our reputation, buy selling things that were fake. Don't let that happen to you.
So how can you avoid this............
Ask the seller outright if it is REAL sterling silver. I went back and emailed 1 and they quickly told me it wasn't but looked just like the real thing.Remember though, they cleared said on their selling sheet it was real! And only when confronted with a direct question did they say it wasn't. Then sadly when I asked another 1 of the sellers the same question they responded with, " It says 925 on it" atleast they told me what it said, but even theirs wasn't real.In our case we lost more then 300dollars. I paid to learn this lesson, you can know it for free.
How else can you avoid buying fake stuff?
Well....people now days are more educated about things then ever. We can simply log onto the internet, and discover things that it took more experienced people a life time to learn. Thanks to google wikepedia ect. Most people won't sell anything for less then its worth. Their are a few auction items you can buy fairly cheap, and sometimes you can get lucky and grab a good deal in bulk. ALSO ask questions! If it takes someone a long time to get back to you, you were better off not buying from that person in the 1st place. If they tell you what you are going to buy is what you think and you find out it isnt, well you have documented proof that they said that. And as long as you can show proof it isn't getting your money back is easy to do.
Be carefull
If i'm going to buy from someone and see that they have negative feedback, I don't automatically rule that person out. I try to click on the person's name that gave them that feedback, and look at some other feedback they left. Did you know by doing that, I found a person that gave 9 out of 10 items, from 10 different sellers all negative feedback! How quick I was to block that person from buying from us, and I'm glad I did. Just take some time to research who it is your buying from, just like you would with the item you are buying.
Hope this helps, best of luck! Be safe. In total, we spent over 700.00dollars.