Why You Should Always Bring a Magnet When You’re Thrifting

Going to the thrift store is always a bit of a gamble. Will you immediately find five amazing and unique pieces, or will you spend hours looking through racks and hangers only to realize nothing you brought into the fitting room is going to work out? Of course, many thrift shops sell far more than just clothing. And poring over hundreds of trinkets and furniture pieces can be equal parts exciting and excruciating — especially if you’re searching for a specific type of item. The hunt tends to get harder if you’re seeking something made from a certain material like real silver, but bringing a magnet to your next shopping trip could be a big help.

“I always bring a magnet to the thrift store to test if it’s real silver or not,” declares the person in charge of the Instagram page for Thrift Shop Donation, a secondhand store in Libertyville, Illinois. In the video you see them in the store with a tiny keychain-size magnet, which they place on various metal items. It sticks to a silver tray, but it doesn’t adhere at all to a silver pitcher (which means the pitcher is real silver). Silver is good quality, but it’s also valuable — especially right now. At the start of February 2026 silver was valued at $79.42 an ounce, which is much more than last year’s valuation of $31.58 an ounce. Resellers, take note.

The video creator also offers a tip for distinguishing between glass and crystal while you shop — and no, you don’t need a magnet for this one. Just give it a good tap; crystal will produce a melodic “ting” sound, while glass makes more of a “thud.”

While it’s true that silver isn’t magnetic, it’s far from the only metal out there that won’t respond to a magnet. In fact, according to Industrial Metal Supply Co., only a few metals out there actually are magnetic: cobalt, iron, and nickel. Steel (both stainless and not) is also magnetic, but that’s because it’s an alloy that contains iron.

Non-magnetic metals include silver as well as aluminum, brass, copper, gold, titanium, and lead. While it’s unlikely you’ll find much real gold in your local secondhand store, materials like aluminum and brass tend to be more common. Brass and silver are fairly different looking, but aluminum and silver do have a more similar appearance (although silver tends to be denser, brighter, and more prone to tarnish). At a place like a thrift store, it could be difficult to distinguish one from the other — even with a magnet.