Hey there, I was looking at putting some of my items on a shop online and part of the blurb back was this; Good quality wholesale silver jewelry may have any of the following marks stamped on it: 925, sterling, sterling silver, ster .925 signifies that the item you are looking at is made up of at least 92.5% silver. The balance of the blend will be an alloy metal. Sterling silver always contains a .925 stamp on it. Avoid silver jewelry without a .925 stamp. Am I able to state that all the pieces that are premium silver are 925? I am looking at the models I am going to offer and was going to put a little 925S on the bottom or back of them, just want to make sure that is the right thing to do? Thanks for any assistance with this one. S.
Correct according to the datasheet linked at the bottom of the materials page for silver. Just make sure that it is legal for you in your jurisdiction to do your own hallmarking/hallmark without an assay/hallmark by means other than stamping...
This problem of hallmarking jewelry has been a very constant source of contention, complaint, and complication at Shapeways. Shapeways won't hallmark the jewelry themselves - and it's questionable whether it's actually legal to not do so when selling to some countries, but nobody seems to have called them on it yet - because that would involve altering your design after printing, and they don't want to have an issue where they hallmark it somewhere you didn't want them to. On the other hand, in many jurisdictions it's illegal for you to 'just' hallmark piece, there's some level of legal oversight required, plus not all of us are jewelers with the tools to hallmark anyway, so we'd need to include it in the actual print file. Which could also be of questionable legality. Which would ALSO need to be a fairly obvious detail, since Shapeways is thus far unable to print very fine detail like most hallmarks. 'Tis a constant sticky wicket.
925 stamp http://www.riogrande.com/Product/Marking-Stamp,-925,-Straigh t-Shank,-1mm/11213002?Pos=2 custom hallmark stamp http://www.riogrande.com/ad/impressions
Thanks for the replies. I am currently trying to find out about Hallmarking my own stuff and Australian laws, hopefully it's favorable. Least I can start by advertising the fact on my site, something I hadn't thought about doing.. duh.