Origin Source

What do the marks on your silver say?

A British hallmark names the office that tested the piece, what the metal is, and the year it was assayed. Pick the shapes you can see — no names needed — and it will tell you what is certain, and say so when it cannot be sure.

Which of these can you see?

This is the town mark — it names the assay office, and on its own it is the single most useful thing on the piece.

Is there a head in profile?

The sovereign’s head was struck only while duty was payable. If it is there, the piece is between 1784 and 1890 — one tap that settles a century.

Which letter is in the small shield?

The date letter. One letter has meant several different years over the centuries, so every possibility is shown rather than a single confident guess — the shape of the letter decides between them.

Pick a town mark to begin. You do not need all three — each one narrows it.

What this tool will not do

It will not guess. Before 1975 every office ran its own cycle of date letters in its own letterforms, and several of those cycles are not safely readable from a description alone. Where that is the case it says so and points at the office’s own tables, because a date that is twenty years out is worse than no date at all — somebody buys on it.

From 1975 onwards the date letter is common to every British office, which makes modern silver unusually safe to read. That is the period this tool is most confident about.

What people ask about hallmarks

How many marks should British silver carry?

Four, traditionally: the sponsor’s or maker’s mark, the standard mark that certifies the fineness of the metal, the assay office mark that says where it was tested, and the date letter. This tool reads the middle two with certainty and the date letter where the cycle is verified. The maker’s mark it cannot help with — there are tens of thousands of them, and identifying one means a register rather than a rule.

Is the date letter compulsory?

Not since 1999. The date letter became a voluntary mark in the United Kingdom from 1 January that year, so a genuine modern British hallmark may carry only three punches. Its absence on a recent piece means nothing; its absence on a Victorian one is worth a second look.

The piece is stamped “sterling” or “925”. Is that a hallmark?

No. A word or a number stamped into metal is a claim made by whoever stamped it. A British hallmark is a set of separate punches struck by an independent assay office after the metal was tested, and that is what gives it its authority. Imported and foreign silver is often marked only with a fineness number, which may be perfectly honest — it simply is not a hallmark and this tool cannot date it.

What does a head in profile mean?

A sovereign’s head struck alongside the other marks is a duty mark: it records that duty was paid on the piece, and it was required between 1784 and 1890. It is one of the most useful marks on the piece, because it brackets the date to just over a century before you have read a single letter. Commemorative heads — the 1935 jubilee, the 1953 coronation, the 1977 silver jubilee — are a different thing and are optional.

Why does one letter give several possible years?

Because the alphabet runs out. Each office worked through a cycle of about twenty to twenty-five letters and then started again in a new typeface and a new shield shape, so an office still open today has struck the same letter roughly once a generation for two centuries. The letterform and the outline of the punch are what separate them, which is why this tool offers every candidate year rather than picking one and calling it the answer.

Do all the British offices use the same date letter now?

Yes, since 1975. From that year a single date letter cycle has been common to every British assay office, so the same letter in the same year sits beside a leopard’s head, an anchor and a rose alike. Before 1975 each office ran its own cycle, which is why the town mark has to be read first.

What is EPNS?

Electroplated nickel silver — a base metal with a thin layer of silver deposited on it. It contains no assayable silver, carries no hallmark, and cannot be dated by this tool. The same is true of A1, EPBM and “silver plate”. Marks arranged to resemble a hallmark on plated ware are common and were made to be mistaken for one.

Can a hallmark be faked?

It can, and forged or transposed marks — a genuine hallmark cut from a damaged small piece and let into a larger one — are the reason a decoder is a starting point rather than a verdict. Anything where real money turns on the answer should go to an assay office or a specialist, both of which will look at the metal and the construction as well as the punches.