I had some mates who did similar to u…There were queues as u say outside jewelers, who were paying less than scrap for Silver antiques, lovely Georgian works of art, so they paid over and got lots of lovely stuff…but literally tons of antique silver was melted down, for scrap…it was a tragedy.
Ps Bunker Hunt was so mean that when he lived in Libya, he grew lettuces and other veg in boxes on the roof of his house, which he then sold to his wife, at just less than shop prices…which were huge as Libya had damn all fresh vegetables!!!!!!