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Brand · 1 guides

Silver: real vs fake

Every Silver checkpoint on this site states a measurement, an accept range and how we arrived at it. No comparison photos we didn't shoot, no certificates.

Real vs fake guides
Checkpoints covered
  • Water displacement density 10.36 g/cm3 for sterling; 10.49 for fine silver; 10.31 to 10.35 for 90 percent coin silver
  • Fineness stamp 925 parts per thousand for sterling; 900 coin, 800 continental, 830 Scandinavian, 835 German and Dutch, 950 French, 958 Britannia, 999 fine
  • UK hallmark set 3 compulsory marks (sponsor, fineness, assay office) on any silver article over 7.78 g sold in the UK; a date letter is optional
  • Magnet pull 0 movement toward a neodymium magnet; a steel-cored piece jumps, real silver does not move
  • Ice melt rate 428 W/m K thermal conductivity for silver; copper 401, brass 111, nickel silver 24.9, stainless steel 14.4
  • Ring duration 1 to 2 seconds of sustained ring when a coin or round is balanced on a fingertip and tapped with another coin; the 1 oz Silver Eagle peaks near 6145 Hz
  • Test acid colour 925 reads dark red under a silver testing solution; 999 bright red, 800 brown, 500 green, base metal no red at all
  • Silver Eagle weight 31.103 grams and 40.60 mm across, 2.98 mm thick, 99.9 percent silver, per the US Mint and Gainesville Coins
  • Edge reed notch 1 deliberate gap in the reeded edge on every Silver Eagle struck from mid-2021 onward; position changes each year
  • Pre-1965 coin weight 6.25 grams for a 90 percent silver quarter; dime 2.5 g, half dollar 12.5 g, Morgan or Peace dollar 26.73 g; a clad quarter is 5.67 g
  • Plating thickness 2 to 3 microns of silver on typical plated fashion jewellery; 0.1 to 0.25 for flash plate, 7 to 15 for plated cutlery; a jeweller's XRF reads 10 to 50 microns deep
  • Cadmium content 0.01 percent by weight, the UK legal ceiling for cadmium in jewellery; sterling is 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper
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