Yes, as the title of the thread says, I have some silver cups that I’d like to use for drinking (I’m a SCAdian). They are not coated on the inside, though, and I’ve been uncertain as to the safety of drinking from them. They have tarnish on the inside as well as the outside, but I’m confident I can remove most of that. Is there a cheap, relatively easy solution, so I can have my cups and drink from them, too?
By the time I have clicked ‘post’, there’s a good chance someone will have suggested that you drop them into a soda solution with some pieces of aluminium foil. Please DO NOT DO THIS - it will remove the tarnish and leave the metal surface looking very pale and sort-of-bright, but this is cleaning by corrosion - the burnished gloss of the piece will give way to a sort of finely-pitted matt silver effect. The same thing happens if you use acidic cleaners - either commercial ones, or makeshift applications of ketchup, cola or lemon juice.
So noted, but even after I polish them appropriately, will they be safe to drink from without some sort of foodsafe coating on the inside?
If they were just clean and polished, they would be pretty safe for drinking most spirits, but wine or anything acidic like fruit juice is going to corrode them a bit. I’m not sure what kind of coatings, if any, are available. I suppose you might be able to get someone to gold-plate the inside surface.
As long as the silver cups are sterile they are safe to drink from. Silver is non-toxic by itself.
As long as you don’t fill a cup with acids there is no problem with it AFIK.
Foodsafe coatings are used to preserve the pretty surface. Usually a light gold plating.
When you say silver cups, that could mean a lot of things. It was not uncommon to make cups out of pewter and silver plate them. As long as the silver plate is intact, the cups would be safe. However, if you stored wine in them or some other acidic material, the silver in time could become pitted. If the pewter formula contained lead, not uncommon in early pewter formulas, then you are exposing yourself to lead. This should be readily identifiable as the cups would/should be clearly marked as plated. Determining if the pewter formula contains lead is a bit more complicated, but any old pewter should be suspect.
If the cups are solid sterling silver, they should either say ‘sterling’ or have the number 900 or 0900 or 925 or 0925 stamped on the bottom. In the UK sterling is 900 but in N. Am it is by law, considered to be 0925. This means the formula is 92.5% silver and the remainer is copper, the latter is added to pure silver to give it wearablitiy and hardness, which it does not have in its pure state. (There is a new formula silver jewelry that is almost pure and resists tarnish—but that is another topic). Unless the cups were repaired, any soldering should be hard solder. This means the alloy is typically a ratio of silver, copper, and zinc (some very low temperature melting silver solders may contain cadmium—another nasty); zinc is added to lower the melting point of the solder below sterling. If the cups were repaired by someone other than a silver or goldsmith, they could contain soft solder----typically 50% lead and 50% tin. (Again this has changed as 50/50 solder was being used for copper pipes in houses and tea kettles and so forth until replaced with 100% tin solder because of the danger of ingesting lead). Soft solder will be easily visible as a dull color and will be soft…ie, you can dent or scrap it easily with a steel tool.
It is unlikely the cups will be sterling if they are not so stamped with both the makers hallmark (essentially a REGISTERED trademark—which not only identifies the maker but also gives regulatory bodies, ie the govt., the means to identify and validate and prosecute if the article is of fineness less than claimed by the maker. It is also ONLY legal to mark fineness if you have a hallmark.
I’d be more concerned with what you’re putting into the cup than the cup itself. 
I’m not aware of any specific problems to drinking out of silver.
Pewter, of course, is an entirely different and valid concern. I avoid the whole issue with a wood tankard. Even my coffee mug at work is wood.
Okay…responding to more than one reply:
Mangetout and spingears- Gold plating was suggested by a good friend, but you’ll notice I said “cheap” in my OP. I was hoping for something that would work until I could afford the expense of gold plating.
Northern Canuck- no makers mark on anything, but a sticker on the bottom that says “Made in India”…so I’m assuming they are silver-plate.
Gotpasswords - You’d be astounded at some of the bad combinations I have had the pleasure of drinking at an event…so bad that you wince as you drink it, until you’ve had enough that anything is good.
For anyone- another friend suggested coating the inside with beeswax. This would negate any drinking of warm beverages, but for feasts and such I usually have iced water or lemonade. I would like to drink wine from them if possible.
I’m a Rennie, I dare you to astound me.
If they were made in India and without any indication they are silver…my guess is you have white brass—sometimes called Alpaca. It is not uncommonly used for jewelry, flatware, and holloware and is usually heavily plated with silver. India makes a lot of brass products and my best guess is you own two of them! It is usually an alloy of 65% copper, 19% zinc, 14% nickel and 2% silver. Red and yellow brass is obtained by varying the ratio of the two ingredients, copper and zinc, and does not contain lead. However brass formulated for forging, extruding, and turning could have 2-3 % lead. Since these cups are from India and who knows what goes on in their recycling of metals, your cups could contain traces of lead. If they were mine, I would carefully dust them once in awhile and enjoy them as ornaments.
Would one of these lead testing kits for home use be useful? I’ve seen them at Home Depot and the like.
Tell me more, please. My father has been drinking from a pewter tankard for many years, and eating from a pewter bowl. Hmm, this could explain a lot if it’s like lead and insanity.
Can we have some pictures? They sound awful pretty.
This is going to be vague, but I remember being in a store and seeing a kind of clear transparant laque that you could paint over silver. The effect was that you never needed to polish it anymore, and possibly that you could use them the way you intend. It wasn’t expensive. Maybe a silverwarestore will know more?
It’s not just acidic drinks that taste funny from silver; it’s sulphur, too. Eggs contain sulphur (H2S?) and eeating egg with a silver teaspoon makes the spoon black and the egg tastes a bit weirdly unpleasant.
I have some pretty silver cups too, but after Mangetout’s post, I don’t know what to clean them with. I usually do the aluminum foil thing, which we’ve just learned is a bad idea. I got the cups at a yard sale, already a little tarnished, and they haven’t been polished since (over a year now). What can I use?
And I don’t care if wine will dull the inside a little. They’re pretty and I’m going to drink wine from them, darn it!
Is there a threat of getting Argyria from drinking from silver cups?
Some pewter does contain lead. Some old pewter can contain a lot of lead - as much as 50/50 tin and lead.
Modern pewter is a mix (alloy) of several metals, usually along the lines of 92% tin, 7% antimony and ½% copper - there can still be traces of lead left over from the processes that refine the various metals, but it’s almost always below the US FDA’s standards for pewter intended for food and drink use - 500 ppm (parts per million) lead content.
If you’re concerned, lead test kits are available at hardware stores for around ten bucks that will give a quick yes/no result of “is there lead?” - I don’t know the exact sensitivity of these as they don’t offer up a gauge of how much lead is present.
Most proteins have disulphide bridges they play an important part in structure and function.
When eggs go off, they release H2S when the proteins break down, and it’s this that gives bad eggs that distinctive ‘rotten egg’ smell.