Photo by Scottsdale Mint : unsplash.com/@scottsdalemint
My oh my! We’re at the end of October already! I hope everyone is geared up for Halloween, or for you European pagan folks, Samhain. I’ve been very busy lately and at the same time, things have been fun. Everyone has their own battles. So remember that next time you’re feeling like life is crazy because we’re all in this together!
Questions Answered
So today I wanted to talk a little bit about the different kinds of silver you’re most likely to encounter when you buy jewelry. I am going to skip over plated and silver filled metals. Sure they both have some silver, but they are not solid silver. Both only have silver on the outside and have other metals which make up the bulk of the material. As such, I won’t get into those, mostly because it isn’t anything I personally want to work with. That doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. Lots of people love costume jewelry for example, because it can be an affordable way to accessorize. If it works for you, then that’s all that really matters in the end.
The five main types of silver that I’m going to talk about today are:
Fine Silver
Argentium® Silver
Sterling Silver
Coin Silver
Reticulation Silver
They all contain at least 75% silver. All but the reticulation silver contain a minimum of 90% silver.
Fine silver is 99.9% pure silver. Known as “3 nines silver,” is the most widely available “pure” silver that you can get with some ease. (99.99% and 99.999% fine are mostly only found in national mints. You can’t buy 100% pure silver because refiners aren’t really able to remove all the trace elements – just like 24k gold isn’t actually 100% pure.) Learn something new each day, huh.
Next is Argentium® Silver. Originally developed in 1990 by metallurgist Peter Johns and his colleagues Middlesex University in London, it is an alloy that uses a small amount of germanium in place of the copper used in traditional sterling silver. It was patented in 1998 and is a little more expensive than sterling silver due to the patents and trademarks. It is very similar to sterling silver in many regards, except it looks more like pure silver in coloration (more whitish) and resists both tarnishing and firescale when worked. From a consumer perspective, it is actually superior to sterling because it is so resistant to tarnishing. From a silversmithing perspective, it requires learning new techniques to work well with it. It is often recommended that a separate set of tools be used to avoid cross contamination because of the germanium content. Because the alloy contains slightly more silver than sterling silver, stamping it “sterling” and/or “925” is allowed. Which may cause confusion for consumers later down the road.
Then comes sterling silver. Sterling silver has a minimum of 92.5% silver content. Usually the other 7.5% percent of sterling silver is copper. Sometimes other metals are used in addition to copper. As long as the silver content is 92.5% silver, it is considered sterling silver and may be stamped, “sterling,” and/or, “925.” Usually when you buy sterling silver it is a silver copper alloy. It does tarnish fairly readily and requires an occasional buffing or other means to remove tarnish. (See my blog about using aluminum and baking soda to remove tarnish.)
Coin silver. Hmm, what the heck is coin silver and why does it even exist?
Well, coin silver, often known as 1 nine fine, is 90% silver with 10% other metals, most often copper. It’s used primarily for minting coins. Hence the name. It’s probably not what you want when you’re looking for jewelry, but there isn’t anything wrong with it either. Just know that coin silver is 90% silver.
Finally, reticulation silver. I briefly mentioned this alloy in my blog post where I covered reticulation. I know people who swear you can’t reticulate sterling silver. (I do, it’s just delicate and takes patience.) Well, reticulation silver is 78-80% silver, and the other 20-22% is copper. This alloy is made specifically for reticulating and gives you lots of room to create a textured surface without too much worry about melting through the entire sheet. Really, the only time you want to see this is as an actual piece that was reticulated.
So, here’s the rub from your standpoint. I’m not required to stamp anything with a quality marking. At least, not here in the United States. However, I can’t tell you something is a certain fineness of silver if it isn’t. For example, I can’t tell you something is sterling silver on my website if it isn’t. At least, legally. The other thing I found out recently is that I shouldn’t be stamping a piece of jewelry with “925” unless I also mark it with a trademark. The thinking behind this is that by registering a trademark, someone has the ability to verify with me (or the holder of the trademark) the fineness of the material that was marked. The other part of all this is that some jewelry is just too small to actually stamp and there are exceptions to handle that.
I hope you found that somewhat helpful so you can at least be able to tell from marketing materials what you are purchasing.
News of late
What’s new?
Well, I’m finally making a little tiny bit of progress on getting my new online store setup. I’ll be really happy when it’s at a point where I can flip the switch and get back to making more jewelry to sell.
I am making a few things. It’s just that the website stuff is so time consuming that I don’t really want to add more things to the existing site because then I’ll have to add them AGAIN to the new site. It’s a bear. Winter is coming. The bear will hibernate. I’ll steal his honey.
In the Works
I just finished a cool pendant design for a client based on a design I posted on Instagram in June. I feel great and I’m really happy they were so patient. Bonus: The smile on their face as they put it on was priceless!
I’m working on creating some simple rune pendants. I’ll probably make some with the fehu rune, representing wealth and prosperity, the inguz rune for creative action, and the thurisaz rune which represents the essence of the god Thor.
I’m also now working to turn a few select designs into vector art in order to begin working with the local engraving company I mentioned in a previous post. Hopefully, I’ll be able to offer a few sterling silver cuff bracelets with my designs engraved in the near future. It might take a little while working with them to figure out what we can achieve between my end and theirs, so stay tuned!
See you next time!
Justin