Hello - late to the thread as usual!

I too agree with all that's said above. I registered with the Birmingham because it was the traditional centre for marking silver (the anchor mark) - as evidenced by all the antique progs on daytime telly (which are my guilty secret ). It sort of hurt me to do that because I'm a born and bred cockney and thought I should really go with London and the leopard; traditionally, London was the gold hallmarking centre. The other reason I went with Brum though, and probably far more important, is the fact that they are so helpful. At the time I was thinking about these things we had a member of this forum registered with London; they made one mistake after another and, apparently, weren't very helpful at all. This might be just one person's experience though. I just didn't want to take the risk because I didn't have a clue what I was doing anyway.

I ordered the 0.5mm stamp - as advised by the assay office. Well, what a waste of time! It might make you legal but it won't make you show - it is far too small to be legible without magnification. For me, my makers mark was important and I was so disappointed that nobody could read the bloomin' thing - especially my family who were just as excited as me.

So, since then I have everything 3D laser marked; I only ever used the punch on that first consignment. The beauty of the laser mark is that you can specify exactly what size you want it - important if your pieces are all different sizes.

To set up the laser marking cost, from memory, around fifty quid for a one-time set up fee.

Hope that helps