What Do Those Little Letters On My Silver Mean?

I’ve recently ventured into making my Botanical Sculptures out of silver.

Silver is such a lovely metal to work with but it is quite pricey and comes under the precious metal banner. And in the UK, one way for your customers know that they are genuinely buying silver (or any of the other precious metals: gold, platinum or palladium) is to see if they are hallmarked

What is a Hallmark? I hear you ask. Well it’s a set of little letters either stamped or laser etched into the metal by one of the 4 Hallmarking Assay Offices ( London, Sheffield, Birmingham and Edinburgh)

So all of my Silver Botanical Sculptures/Pendants will now be hallmarked (this does not included pieces made from mixed metals such as my silver and sixpence sculptures)

Why Buy Hallmarked Pieces?

From a buyer point of view, it tells you you are buying genuine silver, as there are many fakes online, so it’s for your piece of mind. Fakes tend to be plated onto cheaper metals such as copper and if if damage would make repair difficult.

Sterling Silver Money Tree Sculpture with hallmark showing

What Metals Need To Be Hallmarked?

Only Gold, Silver, platinum and palladium are precious metals and only items that weighs the minimum or above the minimum weight can legally be sold as those precious metals and the weights are:

  • Platinum 0.5 grams

  • Gold 1 gram

  • Palladium 1 gram

  • Silver 7.78 grams

So even though my silver pieces do come in under than 7.78 grams I still decided to get them hallmarked so you have the peace of mind that you are buying genuine sterling silver

But What Do Those Little Letters On My Silver Mean?

close up of the hallmark letters on one of my silver botanical sculptures

So what do those little letters mean?

Sponsor’s Mark

This mark represents the maker/company that submitted the piece to be hallmarked. So mine is made up of my business name initials KDA Kerry Day Arts

Metal Fitness Mark

This tells you which precious metal is used. The lion is and 925 stands for Sterling Silver

Assay Office Location Mark

This mark tells you where the piece was hallmarked. Mine were done in London, which is represented by a Leopard.

Birmingham is a Anchor, Sheffield is a Tudor Rose and Edinburgh is a Castle

Date Letter Mark

Date stamps became optional in 1999 so not every hallmarked piece will have a date stamp. Every year on the 1st of January a new letter stamp is created and the previous years stamp is destroyed, and because the shape and font is different each year it is possible to pinpoint which year your item was hallmarked. So my Letter A means 2025

Kerry Day