Silver, from cutlery to bullion: the European reference

The metal that gave its name to money

Only one metal has managed to become a word of everyday life: in French, argent means both the white metal and money itself, a legacy of the centuries when to pay was to weigh out silver coins. The dollar descends from the thaler, a silver coin struck in Bohemia from the sixteenth century. A South American river, the Rio de la Plata, and an entire country, Argentina, bear its Latin name, argentum. As for the pound sterling, it was first a pound weight of silver at the sterling fineness, the same 925 that is still struck today. Throughout the long history of precious metal refining, silver has always walked alongside gold.

Yet this most familiar of metals remains the least understood of inheritances. Every week, complete canteens of cutlery, dishes, beakers and place settings arrive at the counter with the same question: is it silver? The answer comes down to three families you must learn to tell apart, a few hallmarks you must know how to read and two or three number traps that this page dismantles one by one. This is the training the house gives here, complete and straightforward; it takes a quarter of an hour to read.

Solid, plated or white: the three families

Every object with a white, shining gleam in your drawers belongs to one of these three families, without exception. Confusing them is costly in both directions: throwing away a solid silver canteen because it has tarnished, or hoping for a fortune from a service whose only silver is its shine.

Belgian law has settled the question of vocabulary: the law of 11 August 1987 reserves the designation of silver for alloys assaying more than 500 thousandths. Below that, and all the more so where there is no silver at all, the word is forbidden at the point of sale. Where an advertisement hesitates between white metal, English metal or argentan, the law does not hesitate.

925, 835, 800: what the fineness figures say

The fineness of an alloy is expressed in thousandths of fine metal: a place setting at 925 thousandths contains 92.5 per cent pure silver. In Belgium, the law of 11 August 1987 sets two legal finenesses for silver: 925 and 835 thousandths. Hallmarking there is optional, but any declared fineness must be accurate: whoever strikes it answers for it.

Why 925 and not 1000? Because fine silver is a soft metal: a fork of pure silver would bend at the table. The alloying copper brings rigidity, and the fineness simply states where the compromise was placed. English sterling, 925, placed it so well that it has lasted nearly eight centuries and given its name to a currency.

The school of European hallmarks

Hallmarks are read with a loupe, on the underside of dishes, on the heel of cutlery, near the edges. Here are the six marks that settle almost every case encountered at the counter. The photographs below show real hallmarks, captured up close on authentic pieces; tiny to the naked eye, they exist in many variants of period and workshop. Touch each card to open its lesson.

The number trap: 84 versus 90

Two spoons, two almost identical numbers, two opposite fates. The first, Russian, struck 84 with the kokoshnik profile: solid silver at 875 thousandths. The second, French or German, struck 90 in a square: silver plate, a nickel silver body under a few microns of silver. Six points apart on the number, a world apart on the value.

The counter's rule fits in two lines. A number accompanied by a national symbol, Minerva head, crescent and crown, lion passant or kokoshnik, announces a fineness: the object is solid silver. A number alone in a geometric frame, next to a maker's name, almost always announces a plating weight: the object is silver-plated. And at the slightest doubt, one does not gamble, one tests.

Silver plate: an honest invention of 1842

Silver plate is not a fraud, it is an invention of the mid nineteenth century. From 1842, the patents of the Count de Ruolz made it possible to deposit silver by electrolysis on a body of base metal; the house of Christofle turned it into an industry and set gleaming cutlery on every middle-class table in Europe. Before that, so-called Sheffield plate was already rolling a sheet of silver onto copper. The object is honest as long as its name is.

Belgian law, moreover, imposes it word for word: the law of 11 August 1987 requires that these pieces be presented separately, under the sign "silver-plated wares, guaranteed on invoice", to the exclusion of any other wording, and forbids striking them with hallmarks that could be confused with those of solid silver. A serious house therefore always says what it sells. At buyback, the same logic applies the other way round: the layer of silver, real but minute, cannot be recovered; silver plate is valued on its usefulness and its signature, not by weight.

The five checks of the counter

None of these checks replaces the laboratory assay, but together they already sort out the essential. Here, from the check anyone can carry out at home to the spectrometer's verdict, are the five steps of the valuation.

1. The loupe. Everything begins with reading: fineness marks, maker's marks, plating weights. The loupe also reveals the wear that speaks: on a tired silver-plated place setting, the yellow of brass or the pink of copper shows through at the points of friction. On solid silver, the wear stays white: it is the same metal to the core.
2. The magnet. The drawer test, within anyone's reach before making the journey: silver is not magnetic, and a magnet that sticks firmly rules out chromed steel straight away. But the reverse proves nothing, for nickel silver, brass and most white alloys ignore the magnet just as completely. The magnet rules out, it never confirms; which is why, at the counter, the house does not use it.
3. The scales. Silver is dense: 10.49 for the pure metal, a little over 10 for 925. A piece too light for its volume betrays a hollow body or a poor alloy. Honest weighing deducts as a matter of course whatever is not silver: steel blades, weighted handles, mounts.
4. The sound. Set on its balance point and struck gently, solid silver gives a clear, prolonged ring, where common alloys sound short and dull. A traditional clue, never a proof: the shape and thickness of the piece also make the sound.
5. The spectrometer. Elemental analysis gives the composition to the thousandth, without marking the object: this is what delivers the verdict, the spectrometer above all, the touchstone and its acids coming out only rarely for silver. It is the step that turns an estimate into certainty, and at Gold & Silver Company it takes place in front of the client.

What silverware is worth at buyback

The metal value of a solid silver object is calculated in three steps: the weighable weight, multiplied by the fineness, gives the weight of fine silver; that fine weight, multiplied by the day's rate, gives the metal value. A canteen at 800 thousandths whose weighable pieces come to 4 kilos contains 3.2 kilos of fine silver; the silver price, displayed permanently at the top of this page, does the rest. The buyback offer starts from this metal value and deducts the melting and refining costs, a workshop reality for any smelter; they weigh proportionally heavier on silver than on gold, because the fire, the crucibles and the labour are the same for a metal far cheaper by the gramme. The house refines in its own workshops: the costs stay as tight as possible and the price offered is net, with no surprises.

The word weighable matters, and Belgian law itself sheds light on it: it tolerates filler or cement in silversmiths' handles, because a hollow silver handle must be weighted to sit properly in the hand. A table knife is therefore a steel blade and a filled handle: a few grammes of real silver within a total weight that is not. An honest valuation weighs what is silver and sets aside the rest, in front of you.

Finally, some pieces are worth more than their metal: great silversmiths' signatures, antique pieces, collectors' items. The examination decides case by case, and when a piece deserves better than its weight, the house says so.

From place setting to bar: silver today

Silver is not only the metal of canteens of cutlery: it is the best electrical and thermal conductor of all the metals, and industry, from photovoltaic panels to electronics, now absorbs more than half of world demand. The metal of family tables is also the metal of solar roofs; few inheritances can say as much.

On the savings side, silver is bought as bars and coins, like gold, with one sizeable difference: the European VAT directive exempts only investment gold, and new silver therefore remains subject to it, at the standard rate. Whoever sells silverware or coins is, on the other hand, not concerned: no VAT applies to the buyback. The silver price lives at the top of this page, per ounce, alongside that of gold.

In Dottignies (Mouscron), silverware is presented at the counter of the Smelter and Refinery without an appointment: the hallmarks are read, the tests are carried out in front of the client, the offer is calculated to the nearest gramme and payment is immediate. Silver bars and coins go through the same window as gold, directly, with no intermediary.

The final test: ten questions

Ten statements, true or false. Answer on instinct: each answer is corrected on the spot, and the counter awaits you at the end.