I have to agree with Wallace that anyone can add a tag but it doesn't actually mean anything and in some cases buyers are duped by unscrupulous sellers. I've never found any of my customers look for tagging but I tend to even have my underweight items hallmarked if I'm sending in a big batch to make up the min quantity price.
I also found this on marking
Argentium has its own hallmark and is stamped .925 as it is still a sterling silver, although you can buy it at the higher standard of Britannia silver if preferred and it will be hallmarked as such
Last edited by CJ57; 21-12-2016 at 02:42 PM.
Which is another area customers need to be educated on - it has absolutely no basis in reality. I could stamp silver items "made entirely of fish" and it still wouldn't make it the case.
"Assurance" tags give a false sense of security. Customers invariably see a 925 stamp (missing the brass colour poking through the plating on some imports) and declare it to be hallmarked.
As for short-changing on 930 vs 925, the 925 hallmark denotes the *minimum* fineness - and given the value of the materials, the difference between 925 & 999 is negligible. Market it as tarnish-free, fine - but I don't believe that the 0.5% extra silver content represents a valid USP.
Here you go - http://www.argentiumsilver.com/certified-silver-purity
You can apply to be a licensed user of the winged unicorn mark. It still isn't a hallmark though.
There's an optional Britannia hallmark that covers 958 too.
Completely incorrect - Argentium uses around 1% germanium *and copper as well*. As it's only the precious metal content that is relevant to hallmarking, you could put any other metal in there to alloy it to make up the remaining 7.5% - cobalt, zinc, lead, nickel... Some of them won't alloy, some of them will give rise to strange intermetallics (usually brittle), some of them are a bad idea for REACH.
Sterling silver is by definition 925 parts silver per 1000, by weight. The rest is *often* copper, but not necessarily.
Peter Johns' patent on Argentium which clearly details the makeup of it and several other germanium-bearing alloys: https://www.google.com/patents/EP1888797A1?cl=en
I would be concerned re your supplier Argentium 930 is no longer produced
I have enough to be going on with for the next 6 months.
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Argentium uses upto 3% argentium he states. I've read the patent. Slighlty of topic here now lol ive bought a .930 stamp anyway, thanks for all the input.
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