A hallmark is the shortest document in the world. Three characters stamped into the belly of a silver owl can tell you what it is made of, roughly when, and occasionally by whom.
The trouble is that a lot of what gets stamped on silver is not a hallmark at all, and a lot of what gets said about silver is not stamped anywhere. Those are two different problems and it helps to keep them apart.
One note before we start, since the photographs above make it look easier than it is: real marks are usually only a few millimetres across. Everything here is shown far larger than life so you can actually see it.
Part one: what is stamped
The purity numbers
Silver is almost never used pure for objects, because pure silver is too soft to hold detail. It is alloyed, usually with copper, and the number stamped on the piece is parts of silver per thousand.
- 999 — fine silver, 99.9% pure. Common on modern hand-poured art pieces. Soft, bright, tarnishes slowly.
- 925 — sterling, 92.5% silver. The standard for most quality figurines worldwide.
- 900 — coin silver. Historically the standard for currency, and for objects made from melted coin.
- 835, 830, 800 — Continental European standards, widely used in Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. Genuinely silver, just less of it. A great deal of European figurine work is 800.
STERLING or STER spelled out is characteristically American and British. A bare 925 is used almost everywhere.
The stamps that mean it is not silver
These are real punches you will find on real objects, and every one of them means plated.
- EPNS — Electroplated Nickel Silver. The most common plate mark in the world. The base is a copper-nickel-zinc alloy.
- EPBM — Electroplated Britannia Metal. Plate over a soft tin-based alloy.
- EP, EPC, EPWM — electroplated, over copper, over white metal.
- A1, AA, B1 — plating quality grades. A1 was the top grade in the Sheffield system. Still plate.
Be aware these live overwhelmingly on flatware and hollowware — spoons, trays, tea services. On figurines you will meet 925, 800 and no mark at all far more often. But when a plate mark does turn up on a figurine, it is usually EPNS.
Where the stamp actually hides
Flatware is easy — the mark is on the back of the handle. Figurines are not.
Check the underside of the base. The belly of anything that can be turned over. The inner wall of a hollow leg or body. A flat disc set into the bottom. The mounting tab where silver meets a stone or wood plinth. On mounted pieces the stamp is on the silver, never on the stone.
Then use raking light — a lamp low and to one side. A stamp that looks like bare metal head-on will suddenly cast tiny shadows and become readable. This single trick finds more marks than a magnifier does.
Part two: what is only claimed
These are not stamps. They are alloy names and sales language, and several were designed in an era with looser opinions about honesty.
- German silver, nickel silver, Alpacca, Argentan — copper-nickel-zinc alloys containing no silver whatsoever. Magnificent branding by somebody in the 1800s.
- Triple plate, quadruple plate — commercial descriptions that could mean extra plating passes or simply a higher product grade. They were sometimes stamped, but they guarantee no particular thickness and are not comparable between manufacturers.
- Silver tone, silver finish, silver coloured — modern listing language meaning no silver at all.
- Britannia metal — a tin alloy, and not to be confused with Britannia silver, a genuine high-grade standard of 95.8% silver. One letter apart, wildly different objects.
The tell that beats every mark: look at the high points
Plating wears through exactly where fingers go: ear tips, noses, muzzles, wing edges, the crest of a wave, the top of a head. Solid silver wears too, but it wears into more silver. Plate wears into something else.
What that something else looks like depends on the base:
- Copper — warm orange, screams plate from across a room. The easy one.
- Nickel silver — pale yellowish-white, only a shade off the silver around it. This is why good EPNS fools people for decades, and why you check in daylight rather than under a warm bulb.
- Britannia metal — dull flat grey with a soft matte surface, noticeably deader than the silver beside it.
If you learn one thing here, learn to look at the raised bits before you look for a stamp.
When there is no mark at all
Unmarked does not mean fake. Small cast work, studio and hand-poured pieces, and a great deal of older Continental silver were never stamped — either the piece fell below the weight threshold requiring assay, or it was never intended for formal sale.
In those cases purity has to be established by testing, and an honest listing says so rather than quietly guessing upward.
Look it up before you decide
- Online Encyclopedia of Silver Marks — the best free mark database there is, searchable by country and by mark, with a full section on silverplate marks.
- Silver Marks and Hallmarks Directory — strong on Italian and Continental marks, where much figurine work originates.
- Silver hallmarks overview — background on how national assay systems developed and why they differ.
On our listings, the hallmark field records exactly what is stamped and exactly where it sits on the piece. If it says unmarked, it is unmarked, and the price reflects that rather than hoping you will not ask.