A few years ago, I found an odd piece at a Salvation Army store, cost about a buck, must weight a pound and a half. Kind of looked like a fancy mess kit so I was curious, turned out to be a hot water plate, the plate held food which was also a pretty tight lid to the lower portion which apparently was supposed to hold boiled water to keep the food warm. Dug around a bit and found one like it on a collectors site, same hall mark, early 1800s vintage and the one on the site was priced at a couple of hundered as I recall. Not naive enough to believe I could get that for it, but I seem to have found enough pewter glass bottomed mugs and such given for retirement gifts and things which I won't mind melting down, I'll hang nto the hot water plate.
I passed by a fairly large pewter basket type of thing the other day, good price, just have a lot of it now and a steady supply of tin. I definitely wouldn't melt down nice stuff like the pictured tea pot.