A silver hallmarks identification wizard walks you through the marks on a silver piece one at a time — purity, town, date, maker — so you end up with a confident answer instead of a guess. This guide is the manual version of that wizard, with links to deeper references at each step.
Step 1 — Find All the Marks
Hallmarks are usually struck on the underside, foot, rim, or inside lip of a piece. Photograph them under raking light with a 10x loupe so each symbol is legible. A typical British sterling set has four to five marks in a row; foreign silver may have just one or two.
Step 2 — Identify the Purity (Fineness) Mark
Look for a number or word that tells you what the metal actually is:
- 925 / Sterling / lion passant: sterling silver (92.5%).
- 958 / Britannia figure: Britannia silver.
- 800, 835, 900, 916: Continental and Russian silver standards.
- EPNS, EPBM, A1, Silver-on-Copper: silver plate — not solid silver.
- 750: usually 18k gold, occasionally 75% silver. Read more →
Step 3 — Identify the Town / Assay Office Mark
For British silver, the town mark tells you where the piece was assayed:
- Anchor: Birmingham. Read more →
- Crown: Sheffield (and other foreign uses). Read more →
- Leopard's head: London.
- Castle: Edinburgh.
- Hibernia / harp crowned: Dublin (Ireland). Read more →
- Kokoshnik: Russia. Read more →
Step 4 — Decode the Date Letter
British and Irish silver carries a date letter — a single character in a shaped shield that encodes the year. Each assay office runs its own alphabet cycle, so you need the town mark first. Use the date-letter lookup →
Step 5 — Identify the Maker's Mark
The maker's mark is typically a set of initials in a shaped cartouche. Famous British, American, Irish, Russian, and Continental makers each have catalogued marks. The Silver Marks app indexes over 15,000 marks for cross-reference.
Step 6 — Confirm with an App or Database
Once you have a candidate identification, confirm it against a reference database. The Silver Marks app covers 15,000+ silver hallmarks across British, American, Continental, Russian, and Asian silver, with snap-to-match visual search for when the mark is too worn to read.
Common Identification Mistakes
- Mistaking silver plate (EPNS, EPBM) for solid silver.
- Reading a 750 gold stamp as 750 silver.
- Confusing decorative anchors and crowns for hallmarks.
- Assuming a lion symbol always means British sterling — Belgian, Dutch, and other countries also use lion marks.