Start with the marks
Nine times in ten the marks settle whether a piece is real silver or plate. A lion passant, a Britannia figure, a 925 in an oval, or a Scottish thistle means the piece was tested at an assay office and is solid silver. Read the hallmarks guide if the row of punches is unfamiliar.
Anything else stamped on the base is a manufacturer’s own mark, and a manufacturer can stamp what it likes. The remaining five tests are for pieces with worn, missing or ambiguous marks.
What the letters on plate mean
| Mark | Stands for | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| EPNS | Electroplated nickel silver | A silver skin deposited on a nickel, copper and zinc alloy. The commonest by far |
| EP | Electroplate | Same process, base metal unspecified |
| EPBM | Electroplated Britannia metal | Silver over a tin and antimony alloy. Soft, and dents easily |
| A1 | The maker’s own quality claim | A thicker deposit of plate. Not a standard, and not policed |
| A1 quality, AA, A2 | The same idea, graded by the maker | Meaningless outside that maker’s catalogue |
| Nevada silver | Daniel and Arter of Birmingham | A nickel alloy with no silver in it at all |
| German silver, nickel silver, Alpacca | Copper, nickel and zinc | No silver. The names describe the colour |
| Sterling silver plate | A contradiction | Plate. The word “plate” governs |
| Sheffield plate | Two processes, two centuries apart | See below |
None of these is a hallmark, and no assay office ever tested any of them. The EPNS entry sets out what lies under each of the letters and what the Act lets a plater print. Only the four UK assay offices may apply a hallmark, and it is an offence under the Hallmarking Act 1973 to describe unhallmarked metal as silver in trade. A row of symbols that looks like a hallmark but contains no lion, no Britannia and no 925 is a set of pseudo-hallmarks, struck by platers to resemble the real thing. They are legal, they are common on Victorian and Edwardian plate, and they catch people every week.
The magnet
Silver is not magnetic. Neither are copper, brass or nickel silver, which is what most plate is made on. So a magnet cannot prove a piece is silver, but a piece that grips a magnet is plated on steel or iron and can be set aside at once. Keep a small magnet in the drawer for this reason alone.
Knife blades are the exception that confuses people. Solid silver knives have steel blades, so a hallmarked silver table knife grips a magnet at the blade and not at the handle.
The colour of the wear
Look at the high points: the rim, the handle, the feet, the edges of a spoon bowl. On plate, the silver skin wears through and the base metal shows as a warm yellow or pink. On solid silver, wear shows as the same colour all the way down, and a scratch is silver underneath.
Old Sheffield plate has a tell of its own. Where two sheets meet at an edge, the copper shows as a fine pink line, and the inside of hollowware was tinned rather than silvered, so it reads grey rather than bright.
The seams and the edges
Plated pieces are stamped from sheet and assembled, so look for applied borders that hide a raw edge, and for a lip of silver folded over the rim. Solid pieces of quality have cast borders, feet and handles soldered on, and the underside is finished as carefully as the top. A plated piece is finished where it shows.
Turn a spoon over and look at the back of the bowl. Plated spoons wear through at the tip of the bowl first, and the patch is a distinct oval of yellow.
The ice test
Silver conducts heat better than any other common metal. Put an ice cube on the piece and another on a plated or steel object of similar size. The cube on silver melts visibly faster, and the metal beneath it feels cold at once. This separates silver from nickel or stainless steel reliably. It will not separate sterling from a thick plate, because the skin sits on a conductive base.
Weight and sound
Sterling hollowware feels dense for its size, and a tap with a fingernail gives a clear, sustained note. Plate on nickel silver sounds duller and shorter. Britannia metal, which is soft and tin-based, sounds dead. Experience is needed to trust this one, which is why it comes last.
The acid test, and when to stop
Acid is the definitive answer for an unmarked piece. A jeweller or an auction house does it in a minute: a small file cut in a hidden place, a drop of silver testing solution on the cut, and the colour of the reaction reads the fineness. Bright red is high silver, darker red is sterling, green is base metal under a plate.
It leaves a mark, which is why a specialist does it in a place nobody sees, on the foot rim or inside a lid, and why it is the last resort rather than the first.
Two tests that do not work, whatever the internet says. Bleach turns silver black, and it also turns plate black, so it proves nothing and damages both. Rubbing with a cloth to see if black comes off proves only that tarnish exists, and tarnish forms on silver skin as readily as on sterling.
If the marks are legible, stop after the first test. If they are not, and the piece passes the magnet, wear, seam and ice tests, treat it as probably silver and weigh it.
What plate is actually worth
This is the question behind the tests, and the answer is short. Electroplate is worth what somebody will pay for the object, because the silver on it cannot be recovered at a profit. A refiner will not take it. A canteen of EPNS cutlery holds perhaps a few grams of silver spread over a square metre of nickel.
| Piece | Illustrative hammer |
|---|---|
| EPNS canteen of cutlery, boxed, complete | £20 to £70 |
| EPNS teapot or coffee pot | £5 to £20 |
| EPNS tray or salver | £15 to £50 |
| Elkington, Mappin and Webb or Walker and Hall, good pattern | Two to three times the above |
| Victorian plated candelabra, large and decorative | £60 to £200 |
| Plated trophies and cups with dedications | Pounds, or nothing |
Those are illustrative figures for sound, unworn examples, and the price records give more of them. Worn plate, with the copper showing, is worth less than the cost of taking it to a saleroom.
A sterling service of the same size is a different order of figure, and the cutlery guide gives what one makes at auction against what it weighs.
Two things lift plate above that range: a designer name, and completeness. A boxed Christopher Dresser design for Hukin and Heath is a collected object. A canteen missing four forks is a box of cutlery.
Old Sheffield plate is the exception
Old Sheffield plate, made from the 1740s to the 1840s by fusing a sheet of sterling to a copper ingot and rolling the two together, is a different material from electroplate and a collected field of its own. It is mostly unmarked, or carries a maker’s device without a lion, and the copper line at the edges is the identifier.
Candlesticks, wine coolers, entrée dishes and coasters in Old Sheffield plate sell to collectors at prices a Victorian electroplated equivalent never reaches. Do not scrap it, do not replate it, and do not polish it hard, because polishing removes the silver layer and exposes the copper beneath.
For everything that does turn out to be solid, weigh it and put the figure into the scrap calculator, which works from the silver price per gram of the day, for the floor, then read the scrap or auction guide to decide which way it goes. The selling guide covers the four buyers once that decision is made.
