Continental Silver Marks: 800, 813, 830 and 835 Explained

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Last updated: August 13, 2026 · By White Metal Resources Editorial

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Continental European silver marked 800, 813, 830 or 835 shows up constantly in American estates. It arrives as inherited flatware from a grandparent's German cutlery service or as a Danish coffee pot from a mid-century home. It also arrives as an Italian tea set carried back from a post-war Grand Tour, or as a Dutch pill box bought at a small-town antique mall.

Each of those numbers is a millesimal fineness. Each traces back to a specific national law or trade practice, and each ties directly to how much pure silver the piece actually contains. This page decodes the four marks, connects each to its national mark, and shows the melt math that runs from any of them.

Why the numbers are parts per thousand

The three-digit numbers stamped on continental silver are millesimal fineness values. Fineness expresses the pure silver content of an alloy as parts per thousand parts by weight. An 800 mark means 800 grams of pure silver in every 1000 grams of alloy, or 80.0 percent silver by weight.

The rest of the alloy is almost always copper, added for hardness. Silver in its pure form is too soft to hold a knife edge, a spoon bowl, or a decorative rim without deforming. Copper hardens the alloy without changing its color much, which is why continental silver still reads as silver by eye.

Fineness numbers replaced older regional units in the nineteenth century. Germany switched from the lot system (Lot, 1/16 of a mark) to the permille system on 1 January 1888. France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Italy each adopted the millesimal system in their own reforms across the 1800s. The number stamped on a piece is therefore a legal fineness, not a marketing figure.

Fineness sets the melt math on a piece with no further information. Weigh the piece, multiply by fineness, divide by 31.1035 to convert grams to troy ounces, then multiply by the spot silver price. The same formula runs on 800, 813, 830 or 835 silver. Only the fineness multiplier changes.

800: the German and continental minimum

An 800 mark on a piece of European silver denotes 80 percent pure silver by weight, or 800 parts per thousand. This is the legal minimum standard for goods sold as silver in Germany under the Reichsstempelgesetz of July 1884. Any piece marketed as silver in the German market since that law has to test at 800 or above.

The 800 standard is not only German. The Wikipedia Fineness article documents 800 as the French second standard, the Spanish "plata de segunda ley", the traditional Egyptian silver standard, and the Swedish silver standard. It is also the fineness of Canadian circulating silver coinage from 1920 to 1966 or 1967, minted in an 80 percent silver alloy.

800 shows up on a large share of everyday continental silverware from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cutlery services from German firms such as Bruckmann, Wilkens, Koch and Bergfeld, and Robbe and Berking often ran to the 800 standard for standard-grade lines, moving to 835 or 925 for higher grades.

Italian silver from the pre-1968 marking system also frequently carries 800 as the fineness of trade silver. Austro-Hungarian silver worked to the older 13-lot standard sits close to 800 in millesimal terms, and later Habsburg-era silver often carries 800 outright once the empire adopted millesimal marking. An 800 mark is the single most common continental silver fineness a general reader will encounter on an inherited European piece.

813: the 13-lot silver standard

An 813 mark is the millesimal expression of the older 13-lot silver standard. Under the pre-1888 German and Austro-Hungarian lot system, silver was measured in Lots, where one Lot equals one sixteenth of a Mark by weight. A 13-lot alloy therefore contains 13/16 pure silver by weight, or 0.8125, rounded to 813 parts per thousand.

The Wikipedia article on Lot (fineness) documents an Austro-Hungarian lot hallmark for 13 lot silver dated 1807. That mark, or the numeric 813 that later replaced it, tags a piece as a mid-grade older continental standard. Pieces struck to 13-lot silver are older on average than pieces struck to 800 or 835, since Germany replaced the lot system with the permille system on 1 January 1888.

813 is less common than 800, 830 or 835 in the everyday American estate market. It appears mainly on older German, Austrian, Hungarian, and North German silver dating to the mid or late nineteenth century. On a piece marked 813 or on a piece with a numeric lot mark of 13, the melt math runs at 0.8125 fineness, essentially the same output as an 812 or 814 alloy for the melt formula.

Any 13-lot piece assayed under the older regional systems predates the German crescent-and-crown national mark, which was added by an 1888 revision to the 1884 Reichsstempelgesetz. A collector reading a 13-lot or 813 mark should therefore expect an older maker's mark, an older town mark, and no post-1888 national symbol on the same piece.

830: the Scandinavian and Danish standard

An 830 mark on a piece of silver denotes 83 percent pure silver by weight, or 830 parts per thousand. The Wikipedia Fineness article names 830 as the common older Scandinavian silver standard. The Wikipedia Silver standards article confirms that Scandinavian silver has a millesimal fineness of 830 with 83 percent silver and 17 percent copper or other metals.

830 is the fineness most closely associated with twentieth century Danish silver. Danish workshops such as Georg Jensen, founded in Copenhagen on 19 April 1904 by silversmith Georg Jensen, produced flatware and hollowware in the 830 standard for decades, alongside sterling silver for the export market. A Danish piece with a smoothly cast form, an organic Art Nouveau or mid-century line, and a Jensen or "Jensen" mark is usually 830 silver.

830 also shows up on Norwegian silver from the same era, on some Swedish silver from mid-century modern makers, and occasionally on Finnish pieces. Scandinavian silver jewelers moved to 925 sterling and, in some cases, 935 silver in the post-World War II period, per the Wikipedia Fineness article. Any Scandinavian piece marked 925 or 935 is generally a post-war piece, while 830 tags the earlier work.

A Danish 830 piece from the twentieth century usually carries the maker's mark, a numeric 830 or 830S mark, a Copenhagen town mark of three towers on assayed pieces, and an assay-master initial. The three-tower device is the coat of arms of Copenhagen, tied to the city's medieval seal and used on Danish silver assayed in the capital. A modern assay comes from the Danish assay office at Brondby.

835: the Dutch and German mid-grade standard

An 835 mark on continental silver denotes 83.5 percent pure silver by weight, or 835 parts per thousand. The Wikipedia Fineness article documents 835 as a standard predominantly used in Germany after 1884, on some Dutch silver, and for the minting of coins in countries of the Latin Monetary Union such as pre-1927 Italian coinage.

In practice, 835 is the mid-grade continental silver standard. It sits above the German 800 legal minimum and below sterling 925, targeting quality decorative hollowware, better cutlery services, and export flatware. A late nineteenth or early twentieth century German coffee pot or tureen struck to 835 was a step up from the standard 800 line but not a full move to English or American sterling.

835 is common on Dutch silver from the twentieth century. Dutch fineness standards were adapted to conform to international standards in 1953 under the Benelux treaty, and 835 has been one of the Dutch silver fineness levels alongside 925 and, more recently, higher grades. Dutch silver at 835 is regulated by the Dutch Waarborg system, currently overseen by Edelmetaal Waarborg Nederland B.V., with assay offices at Gouda and Joure.

The Wikipedia Silver standards article notes that 835 was used for silver coinage in Latin Monetary Union countries. That covered Italian, Belgian, Swiss, French and Greek silver coinage in an 835 alloy for smaller denominations across the late nineteenth century. Older continental silver coins marked 835, or coins simply known to be Latin Monetary Union issues, run on the same 0.835 fineness for melt purposes as a piece of German silverware marked 835.

Country marks that sit next to the number

The numeric fineness rarely stands alone on a continental piece. Each national marking system pairs the number with a country or assay-office mark, plus a maker's stamp. The three most useful national marks for the four standards on this page are the German crescent-and-crown, the Dutch national assay marks, and the Danish town or assay-office mark.

German silver from 1888 onward carries the crescent and crown mark, known in German as the Halbmond und Krone, added by an 1888 revision to the 1884 Reichsstempelgesetz. The mark shows a crescent moon paired with an imperial crown, and it sits next to the numeric fineness of 800, 835, 900 or 925. A piece with the crescent-crown mark is a piece assayed to the German national standard from 1888 to the present.

Dutch silver is regulated by the Waarborg system, which has been striking hallmarks since at least 1814. Dutch silver marks typically include a national fineness mark and a date letter, plus the maker's registered responsibility mark. Dutch hallmarks are recognized in Austria, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom without further testing under the Vienna Convention, which the Netherlands ratified in 1999.

Danish silver assayed in Copenhagen historically carried the town mark of three towers, which reflects the coat of arms of Copenhagen dating to the city's 1296 seal. Modern Danish silver is assayed at the Danish assay office at Brondby. A twentieth century Danish piece therefore may carry a maker's mark, a numeric 830 or 830S fineness, a three-tower town mark, and an assay-master initial in one visible cluster.

Italian silver from before 1968 was marked using a variety of regional stamps and city marks, often with the fineness numeric alongside. After the 1968 Italian marking reform, Italian silver carries a numeric fineness plus a fabbrica number in a lozenge showing the maker's registered code and the province of manufacture. The 800 mark on an Italian piece signals the pre-1968 trade standard.

Melt content per gross gram across the four standards

The table below runs the melt content per gross gram of alloy across the four continental fineness standards. All figures use an illustrative silver spot price of 30 dollars per troy ounce for computation, which is a stated example and not a market quote. The formula is fineness times gross gram weight divided by 31.1035 grams per troy ounce, multiplied by the spot price per ounce.

Computed from the standard melt formula: fineness times gross grams divided by 31.1035 grams per troy ounce, multiplied by the stated spot price. Fineness values from Wikipedia Fineness article (checked August 2026). Spot price of 30 dollars per troy ounce is an illustrative example, not a current market quote.

The gap between 800 and 835 silver comes out to about 3.4 cents per gross gram at an illustrative 30 dollars per ounce spot price. On a 500 gram Continental silver coffee pot, that is a 17 dollar difference in melt content between the 800 and 835 alloy. Fineness is a real driver of scrap value, and knowing the number changes the melt figure directly.

Silver content ranked across continental standards

The chart below places the four continental silver standards on one millesimal fineness scale alongside sterling silver at 925. The visual makes clear that 800, 813, 830 and 835 are all lower-fineness standards than sterling silver, and that the four cluster close together within a 35 parts per thousand band.

Two takeaways sit in the chart. First, sterling silver at 925 holds 90 more grams of pure silver per kilogram of alloy than German 835 silver, and 125 more grams than German 800 silver. Second, the four continental standards on this page are close to one another in a 35 parts per thousand band, so identification errors between them cost real melt dollars only on larger pieces.

A five step method for decoding a continental silver mark

The steps below turn the country-by-country notes above into one repeatable method. Follow the five steps on any piece stamped 800, 813, 830 or 835 to identify the standard, the country, and the melt math in a fixed order.

1. Locate every stamp on the piece. Marks on continental flatware sit on the back of the handle near the join. Marks on hollowware sit under the foot or inside the lid rim. Photograph the marks under raking light so every stamp is visible.
2. Read the numeric fineness first. A three-digit number of 800, 813, 830 or 835 is the millesimal silver content. That number sets the melt math for the piece, without any other information from the mark cluster.
3. Read the national mark next. A crescent and crown means German silver of 1888 or later. A Dutch national assay stamp with a date letter means Dutch silver. A Copenhagen three-tower or Brondby assay stamp means Danish silver. An older Italian city mark means pre-1968 Italian silver.
4. Read the maker's mark and any date letter. Continental maker's marks are often two or three letter initials in a shield or lozenge. Dutch and later Italian silver carry a date letter that pins the year of assay when cross-checked against a national reference chart.
5. Run the melt math. Weigh the piece on a kitchen or jewelry scale. Multiply the gross gram weight by the fineness. Divide by 31.1035 to get troy ounces of pure silver. Multiply by the spot silver price to get melt value in dollars.

Any continental silver piece that fails at step 2 should be checked for a mark in a less obvious spot before being treated as unmarked. Any piece that fails at step 3 may still be silver of a valid standard, but it is harder to attribute to a country and often prices at a modest discount for that reason. Steps 4 and 5 apply to every piece with a legible fineness.

A worked melt example on an 800 silver piece

Reading the mark decides the fineness. The fineness then runs the melt math on any weight and any stated spot price. The example below applies the five step method to a German 800 silver coffee pot from the twentieth century and converts the fineness numeral into an illustrative melt value.

The same five step method reads a Danish 830 mark, a Dutch 835 mark, or an older 13-lot 813 mark. The melt math changes only in step 5, where the fineness multiplier is 0.830 for a Danish piece, 0.835 for a Dutch or German mid-grade piece, or 0.8125 for a 13-lot silver piece.

Limits and caveats to keep in mind

Every fineness number on this page is a legal or trade standard tied to a national marking system. It asserts the standard a piece was made to, not a live assay of the object in hand. A worn, repaired or altered piece can test slightly under the marked standard, and specialist verification via X-ray fluorescence is the only way to check the actual silver content on a specific piece.

All melt figures on this page are computed from a stated silver spot price. Silver spot moves continuously during market hours. The 30 dollars per troy ounce spot used in the table and example is an illustrative round number for computation, not a forecast, not a current market quote, and not a guarantee of any future price.

Country and workshop practice varied inside every national system covered. A German maker in 1895 did not always mark to the 1888 revision if the piece was worked outside the German Empire. Italian regional practice before 1968 varied by city, and older Dutch silver worked before the 1953 fineness harmonization ran to different standards. Specialist references beat this page for any single piece a reader plans to buy or sell for real money.

Collector premiums for named makers are qualitative and vary with the auction market. A Georg Jensen 830 flatware set commonly sells at a strong premium over melt at a well-attended auction, driven by the maker's mark and the design pattern. This page does not quote dollar figures on maker premiums, because those depend on completed public auction sales for the specific maker, pattern and condition.

Silver held for retirement follows a separate fineness rule at 0.999 or higher. The Internal Revenue Code sets the minimum for silver held in a self-directed IRA at 0.999 fineness, well above every continental standard covered on this page, a topic explored in our silver IRA fineness explainer. Continental silver at 800, 813, 830 or 835 is fine to own personally without restriction, but cannot go inside a self-directed IRA account.

Continental silver mark questions, answered

What does an 800 mark on continental silver mean?

An 800 mark means the piece is silver at 800 parts per thousand fineness, or 80 percent pure silver by weight. 800 is the German legal minimum for goods sold as silver in Germany since the Reichsstempelgesetz of 1884. It is also the French second standard and the traditional Egyptian and Swedish silver standard.

What does an 835 mark on silver mean?

An 835 mark means the piece is silver at 835 parts per thousand fineness, or 83.5 percent pure silver by weight. 835 is a common German mid-grade silver standard used since 1884 and a common Dutch silver standard. 835 was also the fineness of silver coinage in countries of the Latin Monetary Union across the late nineteenth century.

What does 830 silver mean and where is it used?

An 830 mark means silver at 830 parts per thousand fineness, or 83 percent pure silver by weight. 830 is the older Scandinavian silver standard, most closely associated with twentieth century Danish silver including Georg Jensen flatware and hollowware. Norwegian and some Swedish silver of the same era also carries the 830 mark.

What is 813 silver and where does the number come from?

An 813 mark is the millesimal expression of the older 13-lot silver standard. Under the pre-1888 German and Austro-Hungarian lot system, one Lot equals one sixteenth of a Mark by weight. A 13-lot alloy is 13/16 pure silver, or 0.8125, rounded to 813 parts per thousand. It appears mainly on older German and Austro-Hungarian silver.

What is the crescent and crown silver mark?

The crescent and crown mark, or Halbmond und Krone, is the German national silver mark added by an 1888 revision to the July 1884 Reichsstempelgesetz. It sits next to a numeric fineness of 800, 835, 900 or 925 on twentieth century German silver. Older pre-1888 German silver may carry only a numeric fineness and a town mark.

How do I compute melt value on a continental silver piece?

Weigh the piece on a kitchen or jewelry scale in grams. Multiply the gross gram weight by the fineness as a decimal, so 0.800 for 800 silver or 0.835 for 835 silver. Divide the result by 31.1035 grams per troy ounce to get pure silver in troy ounces. Multiply by the current spot silver price per ounce for the melt value in dollars.

Is 800 silver worth less than sterling silver?

Yes, on a per-gram basis. Sterling silver at 925 holds 92.5 percent pure silver per gram of alloy, while 800 silver holds 80.0 percent. On a 500 gram piece, that is 62.5 grams less pure silver in the 800 alloy, or about 60 dollars less melt value at an illustrative 30 dollars per troy ounce spot. Collector premiums for named makers can offset that gap on any given piece.

Can continental silver at 800, 813, 830 or 835 go inside an IRA?

No. The Internal Revenue Code sets the fineness minimum for silver held in a self-directed IRA at 0.999. Every continental silver standard on this page sits below that line, so hallmarked continental flatware, hollowware and decorative silver cannot be held inside a self-directed IRA. Continental silver at 800, 813, 830 or 835 can be held personally without any IRA-related restriction.

Sources

1. Wikipedia, Fineness (silver standards including 800 as the German legal minimum after 1884, French second standard, Spanish plata de segunda ley, Egyptian silver, Swedish silver, and Canadian circulating coinage 1920 to 1966 or 1967; 830 as common older Scandinavian standard; 835 as a standard predominantly used in Germany after 1884 and for some Dutch silver and Latin Monetary Union coinage). Checked August 2026.
2. Wikipedia, Silver standards (Scandinavian silver alloy at 830 parts per thousand with 83 percent silver and 17 percent copper or other metals; German silver marked 800 or 835; Canadian pre-1968 circulating coinage at 800). Checked August 2026.
3. Wikipedia, Lot (fineness) (definition of Lot as 1/16 of a Mark; 13-lot silver equals 13/16 or 0.8125 pure silver; Austro-Hungarian lot hallmark for 13-lot silver dated 1807; German switch from lot system to permille system on 1 January 1888). Checked August 2026.
4. Wikipedia, Assay office (Danish assay office at Brondby; Dutch Waarborg system with assay offices at Gouda and Joure; Netherlands ratification of the Vienna Convention on the Control of the Fineness and the Hallmarking of Precious Metal Objects in 1999; Netherlands hallmarking since at least 1814). Checked August 2026.
5. Wikipedia, Hallmark (definition of hallmark and assay office system; national marking systems in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Italy; Vienna Convention of 1972 on the Control and Marking of Articles of Precious Metals). Checked August 2026.
6. Wikipedia, Silver hallmarks (national marking systems for continental silver, including French Minerva head standards at 950 and 800, Italian pre-1968 and post-1968 marking systems). Checked August 2026.
7. Wikipedia, Georg Jensen A/S (Danish silversmith and design company founded on 19 April 1904 in Copenhagen by Georg Jensen; producer of Danish silver flatware and hollowware in the twentieth century). Checked August 2026.
8. Wikipedia, Coat of arms of Copenhagen (three-tower device from the town seal of 1296, foundation of the Copenhagen town mark used on Danish silver assayed in the capital). Checked August 2026.
9. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Trade Commission Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals, and Pewter Industries (16 CFR Part 23, legal requirements for representing an object as silver, sterling silver, or coin silver in the United States). Checked August 2026.
10. Cornell Legal Information Institute, 26 U.S.C. section 408 (silver fineness rule for IRA metals at 0.999 minimum, referenced to the delivery standard of a regulated futures contract). Checked August 2026.