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If you (or your sister) has a decent auction house that takes silver nearby, I would take a few pieces down to them and see if they will do a quick appraisal or at least tell you if what you have is enough to be worth auctioning. I sold quite a bit of silver a few years ago through an antique auction house in the Asheville area. One cannot of course tell exactly how much one will get till the gavel falls when disposing of it that way, mind you but if you have a pattern that enough people are often interested in buying, the auction house will be able to give you an idea of its saleability, etc. The other thing you might do is, because the flatware is silver, hold on a bit if regular silver prices are down and consider selling when it is as high as it has been for a while. The silver part is not its only value, but, it IS significant, especially if this is not a pattern that a lot of people are interested in buying - someone will buy it at auction for silver value alone (to melt down if possible).