2. WHAT IS SILVER?
Like gold, silver is one of the world's oldest metals for jewelry
design . The metal is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free
elemental form ("native silver"), Silver has long been valued as
a precious metal.
Silver is used in numerous applications other than currency, such
as solar panels, water filtration, jewelry, ornaments, high value
tableware and utensils.
4. MILLESIMAL FINENESS
Millesimal fineness is a system of denoting the purity of silver alloys by
parts per thousand of pure metal by mass in the alloy. For example, an alloy
containing 75% gold is denoted as "750". Many European countries use
decimal hallmark stamps (i.e. '585', '750', etc.) rather than '14K', '18K', etc.,
which is used in the United Kingdom and United States.
It is an extension of the older karat system of denoting the purity of gold by
fractions of 24, such as "18 karat" for an alloy with 75% (18 parts per 24) pure
gold by mass.
5. MILLESIMAL FINENESS
The millesimal fineness is usually rounded to a three figure number,
particularly where used as a hallmark, and the fineness may vary slightly from
the traditional versions of purity.
Here are the most common millesimal fineness's used for precious
metals and the most common terms associated with them.
7. FINE SILVER
Fine silver has a fineness of 999. Also called pure silver,
or three nines fine, fine silver contains 99.9% silver, with the
balance being trace amounts of impurities. This grade of
silver is used to make bullion bars for international
commodities trading and investment in silver. In the modern
world, fine silver is understood to be too soft for general use.
8. BRITANNIA SILVER
Britannia silver has a fineness of at least 958.
The alloy is 95.84% pure silver and 4.16 per cent
copper or other metals. The Britannia standard
was developed in Britain in 1697 to help prevent
British sterling silver coins from being melted to
make silver plate.
9. STERLING SILVER
Sterling silver has a fineness of 925. The
sterling silver alloy is 92.5% pure silver and 7.5
per cent copper or other metals.
10. COIN SILVER
Coin silver has a fineness of 900. The term "coin silver"
was derived from the fact that much of it was made
from melting down silver coins. It is important here to
note that there are differences between the coin silver
standard and the coin silver alloy, as actually used in
making silver objects.
12. GERMAN SILVER
German silver will be marked with a millesimal
fineness of 800 or 835 (80% or 83.5% pure silver).
Any items simply marked "German silver",
15. HALLMARKED YOUR
SILVER
BIS introduced hallmarking for silver jewellery in December
2005 under IS 2112, the standard specification for
'Hallmarking of Silver Jewellery.
16. TEST YOUR SILVER
Bleach Test :
1. Simply put a drop of bleach on your item. Silver
tarnishes extremely quickly when exposed to a
powerful oxidizing agent such as common bleach.
2. Watch for tarnishing or no reaction. If it rapidly
tarnishes and turns black then the item is silver.
