What a crescent and a crown certify
A German silver mark is the maker’s word rather than an assay. No German assay office has tested silver since 1888, when the statute behind the mark replaced the towns’ own inspection with a declaration by the firm. The Gesetz über den Feingehalt der Gold- und Silberwaren of 16 July 1884 allows gold and silver wares to be made and sold at any fineness at all, and regulates only how a fineness is stated. So a crescent moon, a crown and the figures 800 record what the firm striking them claims, and section 7 puts the liability on the seller.
| Mark | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Crescent moon | Silver. The crown stands to its right |
| Crown | Required beside the crescent. Not Sheffield’s crown |
| Sun enclosing a crown | Gold, not silver |
| 800 | The lowest fineness the Act lets silver tableware state |
| 835, 900, 925 | Higher claims, all lawful |
| A firm’s name or trade mark | Required with the figures. Who answers for the metal |
| 12 or 13 | Loth, from before 1888 |
| A number on plated cutlery | The weight of silver deposited. The piece is electroplate |
The four things the stamp has to contain
The shape of the mark was settled by a notice of 7 January 1886 made under section 3 of the Act, and that notice is still in force. It requires four elements: the imperial crown, a crescent moon for silver or a sun for gold, the fineness in thousandths, and the firm or its registered trade mark. It also fixes where the crown goes. On gold it sits inside the sun; on silver it stands to the right of the crescent.
That gives a reader a test rather than a chart. A crescent and a crown with no number is an incomplete mark, and a bare number with no crescent anywhere on the piece is a plain fineness stamp rather than the mark the Act describes.
The crescent and crown is not allowed on jewellery
Section 5 treats jewellery apart from tableware. Gold and silver jewellery may be stamped at any fineness, stated in thousandths, and the crescent-and-crown stamp may not be applied to it at all. A German silver brooch marked 835 and nothing else is therefore marked correctly, and a crescent and crown on a ring is either not German or not within the Act.
British law runs the other way, though not as far as people assume. An office mark and a standard figure are the two compulsory punches on a hallmarked British piece, but Schedule 1 exempts silver under 7.78 grams, so a British chain can carry a bare 925 and be legal. The 925 entry has both halves.
Before 1888 there was no German standard
The Act took effect on 1 January 1888, and nothing before it was national. An earlier piece carries a town’s inspection mark and a master’s mark, and any fineness is given in Loth out of sixteen. Sixteen Loth was pure, so the figures work out by division and need no table to check.
| Loth | Parts silver in a thousand |
|---|---|
| 12 | 750 |
| 13 | 812.5 |
| 14 | 875 |
| 15 | 937.5 |
The town mark is what places such a piece, and each town used a device from its own arms, so that is a job for a printed German table. The identifier on this site holds no Continental office and no Continental cycle, and will not date a German piece of any period.
What 800 and 835 are worth by weight
Both common German standards sit below sterling, which is the reason to read the number before anything else. A hundred grams at 800 holds 80 grams of fine silver and at 835 it holds 83.5, where sterling holds 92.5, so a German canteen is worth about 86 per cent of a British one of the same weight before the pattern is considered. The silver price page has the 800 row.
Selling one here is the next question. Section 1 of the Hallmarking Act makes it an offence to describe an unhallmarked article as silver in the course of a trade, and Germany is not among the 22 contracting states of the Vienna Convention, which dates from 1972 and reaches nothing antique. A dealer offering a German tureen therefore needs a British hallmark or an exemption, which is why a saleroom catalogues it by its German marks and leaves the word sterling out. A private seller stands outside section 1, as the how to sell silver guide explains.
German silver holds no silver
The phrase is the oldest trap in the subject. German silver, Neusilber and Alpacca all name a copper, nickel and zinc alloy with no silver in it whatever, and it is the base metal electroplate is deposited onto. The EPNS entry lists German silver and Alpacca in its table.
Numbered flatware is the same trap wearing a figure. Section 9 exempts silver-plated cutlery and tableware carrying a number stamp that states the weight of fine silver deposited, which is why German flatware reads 90 or 100 where a British plater struck EPNS. The Act does not say what that weight is counted over, and it is not grams of silver on the fork in your hand, so do not put it through a melt sum. No deposit makes a plated piece worth melting.
When the row matches nothing in the Act
From the later nineteenth century firms at Hanau, near Frankfurt, made silver in sixteenth and seventeenth century styles and struck it with punches imitating older Continental marks. Such a piece is genuine silver and genuinely German, and a century and a half younger than its shape suggests.
So the mark and the style have to agree before either is trusted. A crescent, a crown, a number and a firm put a piece in 1888 or later whatever its form says. A row matching nothing in the Act, on an object styled 1650, is a question for a silver specialist rather than a mark table, and the six tests will settle whether the metal is solid before anyone argues the date.
