Silver Hallmarks Guide: 925, 800, Sterling and World Marks Decoded

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Last updated: August 12, 2026 · By White Metal Resources Editorial

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Anyone holding a piece of old silver runs into the same puzzle. There is a small stamp on the back, a lion, a head in profile, a number, some initials. That stamp is not decoration. It is a hallmark, and it tells the reader what the piece is made of, when and where it was assayed, and who made it.

This page decodes the marks a general reader is likely to encounter on inherited silver, on estate finds, or on pieces bought at auction. It covers the American, British, French, German, Russian, and Mexican systems in one place, with a scannable table and a plain method for reading a mark step by step.

What a silver hallmark actually is

A hallmark is an official stamp punched into a metal object to certify its content of a noble metal such as silver, gold, or platinum. The mark comes from a trusted third party, historically a guild guardian and today an assay office in most countries that hallmark at all.

Hallmarks are not the same as maker's marks. A maker's mark identifies the shop or the silversmith. A hallmark certifies the metal content. On a British piece, both appear side by side and are read together, along with a town mark and often a date letter.

The United States is one of the largest markets for antique silver and has no national assay office. That gap explains why American silver is marked with a purity claim (STERLING, 925, or COIN) and a maker's name but with no third-party assay stamp, unlike its British and French counterparts.

How to read a hallmark, in order

Every silver hallmark carries at most four pieces of information: the metal standard, the country or assay office, the year (in some systems), and the maker. The order they appear in on the piece varies by country, but the reading order is always the same.

Start with the numeric fineness or the symbol that stands for it. 925 or STERLING means sterling silver. 800 means a lower continental standard. 900 or COIN means older American or Mexican coin silver. That number sets the melt math for the entire piece.

Next look for the country mark. A lion passant means British sterling. A Minerva head means French silver. A crescent with a crown means German silver. An eagle with a number inside means Mexican silver of the 1948 to 1979 period. Each of these has its own full section below.

Third, look for a date letter or a date system. British silver used a rotating alphabet of date letters for centuries. French silver did not date individual pieces. American silver had no national date system. Fourth, look for the maker's initials or the shop name, which sit near the country mark.

United States: STERLING, 925, COIN

American silver is the plainest system covered here because the United States never adopted a national assay office. The Baltimore assay office ran from 1814 to 1830 and issued a numeric pennyweight mark used by local silversmiths, but that experiment was regional and short lived.

Sterling silver became the American decorative standard after Tiffany adopted it in 1851. The Stamping Act of 1906 made .925 the statutory minimum for goods sold as sterling in the United States, and most large firms had already migrated to sterling by the 1880s. Pieces from that period forward are marked STERLING, 925, or 925/1000.

Silver made in the United States before roughly 1868 was worked at the .900 coin silver standard, sourced from melted Spanish and United States silver coinage. Those pieces carry the marks COIN, PURE COIN, DOLLAR, or the letter D, along with a shop name or initial. There is no city mark and no date letter on American coin silver.

A single-firm date system was adopted by Tiffany, Gorham, and Reed and Barton starting in the late 1800s. Each firm published a decoding table for its symbols. American pieces without a firm-published date system carry only STERLING and a maker, and are dated by style rather than by mark.

United Kingdom: lion passant, town, date letter

British hallmarking is the most highly structured system in the world and the one collectors reach for first. A British sterling silver piece assayed since 1478 carries a compulsory core set of marks, with an optional date letter until 1999 and an optional maker's or sponsor's mark.

The core marks are the sponsor's or maker's mark, the assay office town mark, and the standard mark for the metal fineness. The sterling standard of .925 is confirmed by a lion passant, a walking lion in profile, which has denoted sterling silver on British plate since a 1544 Tudor statute.

Britannia silver at .958 fineness was obligatory in Britain between 1697 and 1720 as an anti-clipping measure. After 1720 it became an optional higher standard, marked with a figure of Britannia in place of the lion passant. Britannia silver still ships from British assay offices today for buyers who ask for it.

The Hallmarking Act of 1973 made Britain a signatory to the Vienna Convention and added platinum to the compulsory system. Since 1999 the date letter is optional rather than required. Palladium was added in January 2010 as a fourth precious metal covered by the same core mark structure.

British assay office town marks

Four British assay offices are active today: London, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Edinburgh. Each stamps its own town mark next to the fineness mark, and any hallmarked British silver piece can be traced back to the office of assay from that town mark alone.

London uses a leopard's head, first adopted in 1300 under Edward I and continuous since. Birmingham uses an anchor, adopted when the office opened in 1773. Sheffield uses a Yorkshire rose since a reform in 1975, replacing the older crown mark it used from 1773 to 1974. Edinburgh uses a castle three-towered mark, adopted in 1681.

Older British silver may carry an assay office mark from an office no longer active. The main closed offices are Chester (a shield with three wheatsheaves, closed 1962), Newcastle (three castles, closed 1884), Exeter (a three-towered castle, closed 1883), Dublin (a crowned Hibernia harp), and Glasgow (a fish, tree, bell, and bird, closed 1964). Each mark identifies both the office and the era.

Since a 2013 legal reform, Birmingham and Sheffield can strike their marks in overseas offices. Birmingham Assay Office has struck marks in Mumbai since July 2016. Any offshore-struck British hallmark must carry an added mark that distinguishes it from a mark struck on British soil, so the town mark alone no longer proves in-country assay.

The British date letter system

Every British assay office cycles through a rotating alphabet of date letters, one letter per assay year, in a specific typeface for each cycle. A collector with a reference chart can read the year of assay directly from the letter and the typeface without any other information.

The four active offices used to run their own separate date-letter cycles, with different starting years and different alphabets. Since the Hallmarking Act of 1973 all four use the same date-letter sequence, and since 1999 the date letter is optional on new work rather than required.

A collector looking up a date letter needs three inputs: the letter shape, the case (upper or lower), and the shield or frame around it. Any specialist reference chart on British hallmarks covers each office and each cycle. The date letter combined with the town mark pins the year of assay to within one year.

The date letter system runs back into the fifteenth century and is one reason British silver is easier to date than most other national silverware. American, French, and German silver rarely carry a date letter, so the pieces are dated by style and by maker rather than by mark.

France: the Minerva head system

French silver of the modern period carries a Minerva head, the profile of the goddess Minerva. The Minerva has been the French assay mark for silver made of the solid metal since 1838. Any solid French silver piece worked after 1838 for the home market carries this mark somewhere.

France uses two silver standards. The first standard is .950 fineness, marked with a Minerva head that contains a small numeral 1. The second standard is .800 fineness, marked with a Minerva that contains a small numeral 2. Both are silver of the solid metal, not plate.

French silver made for export carries a different mark: the head of Mercury with a small numeral. Mercury 1 denotes .920 fineness, Mercury 2 denotes .840, and Mercury 3 denotes .750. Export silver was worked at these lower fineness levels because import duties in receiving countries were lower on lower-grade silver.

The French maker's mark is by law a lozenge, the diamond shape, holding the maker's initials plus a small symbol. This lozenge sits next to the Minerva or Mercury mark and identifies the shop rather than the standard. French silver never used a rotating date letter, so pieces are dated by style and by the maker's registered activity period.

Germany: crescent, crown, and 800 or 835

Germany adopted a national silver marking system with the Reichsstempelgesetz of July 1884, which set 800 parts per thousand as the legal minimum silver standard for goods sold as silver in the German Empire. The law required the fineness numeral and a national mark on any silver piece.

The national mark is a crescent moon paired with a crown, added to the numeric fineness beginning with an 1888 revision to the 1884 law. A German silver piece from 1888 onward normally carries a fineness numeral (800, 835, 900, or 925), the crescent and crown, and a maker's name or logo. Older pre-1888 German silver may carry only a numeric fineness and a town mark.

800 silver is the German legal minimum and the most common German standard for hollowware and cutlery of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 835 silver, at 83.5 percent pure, is common on quality decorative pieces from the early twentieth century. 925 silver was used by German makers exporting to the British and American markets.

The crescent and crown mark is often described in the antique trade as the Halbmond und Krone, the German for "crescent moon and crown". It is the single most useful field mark for identifying twentieth century German silver, because it appears on almost every piece struck since 1888.

Russia: 84, 88, and 91 zolotnik

Russian silver of the imperial period uses the zolotnik system rather than the millesimal system. A zolotnik was 1/96 of a Russian pound and was the traditional unit for expressing the fineness of Russian silver from the late seventeenth century through 1927, when Russia switched to the millesimal system.

84 zolotnik is the most common Russian silver standard and equals .875 fineness, or 87.5 percent pure silver. The number 84 appears as a small stamp next to a city or assay-master mark. Russian imperial silver hollowware, flatware, and religious objects are usually 84 zolotnik.

88 zolotnik is a higher Russian standard equal to .9166 fineness, or 91.66 percent pure silver. It appears on higher-grade decorative silver and on some cases and boxes. 91 zolotnik is a still higher standard equal to .9479 fineness, or 94.79 percent pure silver, and appears on presentation silver and on some liturgical pieces.

A separate Russian mark called the kokoshnik was added by the 1899 assay reform. The kokoshnik shows a woman's head in a traditional Russian headdress in profile, facing left in the period 1899 to 1908 and facing right from 1908 to 1927. The kokoshnik direction and the assay-master initials narrow the date of a Russian silver piece to within a small window.

Mexico: eagle numbers and spread-eagle codes

Mexican silver of the twentieth century falls into two clear marking eras. From 1948 to about 1979, Mexican silver was marked with an eagle assay mark containing a workshop number, plus a fineness of 925 or 950. From 1979 onward Mexican silver carries a spread-eagle plus letter-and-number code that identifies the workshop.

The eagle-and-number system assigned each Mexican silver workshop a number stamped inside a small eagle punch. Eagle 3 for example was assigned to the Los Castillo workshop of Taxco. A collector with a workshop number reference can identify the shop and the approximate date range from the eagle mark alone.

Post-1979 Mexican silver carries a spread-eagle mark plus a two or three letter code and a two or three digit number, such as TS-01 for Taxco shop 01. That mark is regulated by the Mexican Dirección General de Normas and applies to any silver piece manufactured in Mexico for domestic or export sale.

Mexican silver marked in the pre-1948 period usually carries only a maker's name and sometimes a purity claim, but no consistent national mark. Silver from that era is dated by style and by maker research rather than by any assay stamp. The Taxco silver revival led by William Spratling starting in the 1920s produced most of the collectible pre-1948 Mexican silverware known in the American market.

World hallmarks table by country

The table rolls up the essential marks for the six national systems most commonly seen on silver in the American antique and estate market. Regional practice varied inside every country, and dates are approximate. The fineness numbers and mark shapes are the load-bearing information for a reader in hand.

Sources: Wikipedia Hallmark (assay office system and Vienna Convention); Wikipedia Silver hallmarks (France, United States, United Kingdom, Japan); Wikipedia Fineness (national silver standards including German 800 and 835, Russian zolotnik values, French 1st and 2nd standard); Wikipedia Zolotnik (unit definition, 84 at .875, 88 at .9166, 91 at .9479); Wikipedia Sterling silver (Britannia standard obligatory 1697 to 1720, Stamping Act of 1906). Checked August 2026.

Silver fineness by national standard, at a glance

The chart below places every national silver standard covered on this page on one millesimal fineness scale. It makes visible how far apart 800 continental silver sits from 925 sterling silver, and where the Russian zolotnik standards fit relative to both.

Two practical takeaways sit in the chart. First, 800 silver holds 125 grams less pure silver per kilogram than sterling silver, which is a real 13.5 percent gap in metal content. Second, no national mark on this scale denotes a piece with a silver content below 800 parts per thousand for objects sold under a national silver-purity certification.

A six step method for reading any silver hallmark

The steps below turn the country-by-country rules into a single repeatable method. Follow the six steps on every piece and no hallmark from the six systems above will get read out of sequence.

1. Turn the piece over and locate every stamp. Marks sit on the back of a spoon or fork bowl, under the foot of a tea pot or a bowl, and inside the lid rim of a hinged box. Take a photograph with a phone in raking light so every stamp is visible.
2. Read the numeric fineness first. Look for a three-digit number: 800, 835, 875, 900, 916, 925, 950, or 958. Or look for a purity word such as STERLING or COIN. That number sets the silver content and the melt math for the piece.
3. Read the country symbol next. A lion passant means British sterling. A Minerva head means French silver. A crescent with a crown means German silver. An eagle with a small number inside means Mexican silver from 1948 to 1979. A zolotnik numeral means Russian imperial silver.
4. Read the assay office or town mark, where present. The four British assay marks are the leopard's head for London, the anchor for Birmingham, the Yorkshire rose for Sheffield, and the three-towered castle for Edinburgh. Russian silver carries a city mark or an assay-master initial next to the zolotnik.
5. Read the date letter or date system. British silver carries a rotating date letter (optional after 1999) that pins the year of assay when cross-checked against a reference chart. Other national systems date by style, maker, and workshop code rather than by a date letter.
6. Read the maker's mark or the shop name last. The maker sits near the country mark and is often a two or three letter initial. British and French maker's marks fit inside a small shield or lozenge. American maker's marks are the full shop name or a monogram, without a shield.

Any hallmark that fails at step 2 or at step 3 should be treated as unmarked. Step 2 fails when there is no fineness number and no purity word. Step 3 fails when there is no recognizable country symbol. Cross-check the piece against a specialist reference before it is priced as silver at all. Marked silver is easier to authenticate than unmarked silver, in every national system.

A worked example on a hallmarked serving spoon

Reading a hallmark decides what the piece is made of and how to price its silver content. The example below runs the six steps on one hypothetical serving spoon and converts the fineness numeral into an illustrative melt value at a stated silver spot price.

The same six steps read a French Minerva mark, a German crescent-crown mark, or a Russian 84 zolotnik mark. The melt math changes only in step 2 (the fineness multiplier), which is 0.950 for a French 1st standard piece, 0.800 for a German 800 piece, or 0.875 for a Russian 84 zolotnik piece.

What fake and dubious hallmarks look like

The presence of a mark is not proof the piece is solid silver. Fake and dubious hallmarks show up on new counterfeit pieces, on older silver plate meant to pass as solid, and on legitimate silver that has been altered to invent a false provenance. Six patterns cover most of what appears in the market.

First, a real hallmark is punched into the metal with a steel die, not cast into the object during manufacture. A cast mark has soft rounded edges that follow the mold. A punched mark has crisp edges with a slight rim of displaced metal around it. A jeweler's loupe at ten times magnification separates the two.

Second, a real hallmark sits in a location a working silversmith would actually mark: the back of a spoon bowl, the underside of a foot, the inside of a lid rim. A mark stamped on a visible surface of the object or in an odd out-of-workflow spot is a red flag.

Third, a real hallmark set is internally consistent. A 925 numeric next to a lion mark that does not match any known British assay office is not a real British hallmark. A Minerva head with numeric 3 is not a real French standard, because France uses only 1 and 2 for home market silver.

Fourth, silver plate wearing through in normal handling exposes a base metal underlayer, usually copper or nickel silver. A piece marked STERLING or 925 that shows a yellowish or greyish base metal at wear points on handles or spoon tips is a piece marked with a fake numeric on a plate object.

Fifth, a piece with a real old hallmark that has been re-stamped with a second, later mark is called a "duty dodge" or an altered mark. The second mark may be genuine on its face but was struck years or decades after the original. Auction houses discount such pieces heavily on identified alteration.

Sixth, the Federal Trade Commission Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals and Pewter Industries at 16 CFR Part 23 set the American legal requirements for representing an object as silver, sterling, or coin silver. A dealer misrepresenting the standard of a silver piece is running afoul of those Guides regardless of what mark the piece carries.

Limits and caveats to keep in mind

Every fineness number on this page is a definitional value tied to a national marking system, not a direct assay of the piece in hand. A hallmark asserts the standard the piece was made to, but an object can be worn, repaired, or altered in ways that change its actual metal content over a long working life.

Any melt figure quoted here is a computation from a stated silver spot price, not a live market quote. Silver spot moves continuously during market hours. All dollar figures on the page use example spot prices of 20, 30, or 40 dollars per troy ounce, picked as clean round numbers rather than as predictions.

Regional and workshop practice varied inside every country covered. A shop in the American colonies of the 1750s did not always follow the .900 standard the United States Mint adopted after 1837. A Russian assay-master mark in a specific city can shift a piece's dating window by ten years or more. Specialist references beat this page for any single piece a reader plans to buy or sell for real money.

Collector premiums for named makers, forms, and periods are qualitative and vary with the market. This page does not quote dollar values on maker premiums, because those depend on completed public auction sales for the specific maker and form. Anyone with a signed or identified piece should check specialist auction records before pricing.

Silver held for retirement follows a separate fineness rule. The Internal Revenue Code sets the fineness minimum for silver held in a self-directed IRA at .999, well above every hallmark standard covered on this page. Antique hallmarked silver is fine to own personally, but it cannot sit inside a self-directed IRA account, a topic covered in our silver IRA fineness explainer.

Silver hallmark questions, answered

What does a 925 mark on silver mean?

A 925 mark means the piece is made of sterling silver at .925 fineness, or 92.5 percent pure silver by weight. The other 7.5 percent is usually copper, added for hardness. 925 is the world's most common decorative silver standard and appears on British, American, Mexican, and modern Continental silver.

What does an 800 mark on silver mean?

An 800 mark means the piece is made of silver at .800 fineness, or 80 percent pure silver by weight. 800 silver is the German legal minimum since the 1884 law, the French 2nd standard, the Spanish "plata de segunda ley", and the standard for Egyptian, Swedish, and older Canadian circulating silver coinage.

How do I read a British hallmark?

Read four marks in order. First, the maker's or sponsor's initials. Second, the assay office town mark: a leopard's head for London, an anchor for Birmingham, a Yorkshire rose for Sheffield, a castle for Edinburgh. Third, the fineness number, or a lion passant for sterling. Fourth, the lowercase date letter for the year of assay. Since 1999 the date letter is optional on new British silver.

What is a Minerva head hallmark?

A Minerva head is the French national assay mark for solid silver in the home market since 1838. A Minerva with a small numeral 1 denotes .950 fineness first standard silver. A Minerva with a small numeral 2 denotes .800 fineness second standard silver. The mark sits next to a maker's mark in a diamond-shaped lozenge.

What is the German crescent and crown silver mark?

The crescent-and-crown mark, or Halbmond und Krone, is the German national silver mark from 1888 onward. It appears next to a numeric fineness: 800, 835, 900, or 925. 800 is the German legal minimum since the July 1884 Reichsstempelgesetz. The crescent-crown mark is the single best field identifier for twentieth-century German silver.

What does 84 zolotnik mean on Russian silver?

The number 84 next to a zolotnik-system stamp on Russian imperial silver denotes .875 fineness, or 87.5 percent pure silver. 84 zolotnik is the most common Russian imperial silver standard. Russian pieces marked 88 zolotnik are .9166 fine and pieces marked 91 zolotnik are .9479 fine. The system ran through 1927, when Russia switched to millesimal marks.

How do I tell a fake silver hallmark?

A real hallmark is punched into the metal with a steel die and shows crisp edges with a slight rim of displaced metal. A cast mark has soft rounded edges. A fake set often mixes systems (a 925 next to a made-up lion), places the mark in an odd location, or appears on an object that shows a base metal underlayer where the plating has worn through.

Are hallmarked antique silver pieces IRA-eligible?

No. The Internal Revenue Code sets the fineness minimum for silver held in a self-directed IRA at .999, referenced to the delivery standard of a regulated futures contract. Every hallmark standard on this page (925 sterling, 900 coin, 875 zolotnik, 800 continental) sits below that line. Antique hallmarked silver can be held personally without restriction but cannot go inside a self-directed IRA.

Sources

1. Wikipedia, Hallmark (definition of hallmark and assay office system, Vienna Convention 1972, list of active national systems, UK assay office marks including leopard's head London, anchor Birmingham, Yorkshire rose Sheffield, castle Edinburgh, Hallmarking Act 1973 and 1999 date-letter reform). Checked August 2026.
2. Wikipedia, Silver hallmarks (United Kingdom four-mark system, France Minerva head since 1838 with 1st standard .950 and 2nd standard .800, Mercury head export marks .920/.840/.750, French maker's lozenge, United States coin silver and sterling adoption after 1868). Checked August 2026.
3. Wikipedia, Fineness (millesimal fineness definitions for silver at 999, 958 Britannia, 950 French 1st standard, 947.9 Russian 91 zolotnik, 935 Swiss standard, 925 sterling, 916.6 Russian 88 zolotnik, 875 Russian 84 zolotnik, 835 German after 1884, 800 German legal minimum and French 2nd standard). Checked August 2026.
4. Wikipedia, Zolotnik (unit definition at 1/96 of a Russian pound, use as fineness measure for imperial Russian silver, 84 zolotnik at .875, 88 zolotnik at .9166, 91 zolotnik at .9479). Checked August 2026.
5. Wikipedia, Silver standards (British sterling .925 from twelfth century, French 1st standard .950, Russian zolotnik values, German 800 and 835 standards, Scandinavian 830, coin silver .900). Checked August 2026.
6. Wikipedia, Sterling silver (1275 statute of Edward I on sterling silver coinage, Britannia standard obligatory 1697 to 1720 as anti-clipping measure, Colonial American silversmiths adhered to London Goldsmiths standard until 1814 Baltimore assay office). Checked August 2026.
7. Wikipedia, Britannia silver (higher British silver standard at .958 fineness, obligatory 1697 to 1720 to prevent melting of sterling coinage, optional standard from 1720 onward). Checked August 2026.
8. Wikipedia, Coin silver (American silver alloy at .900 fineness from melted United States and Spanish silver coinage, use from early 1800s through 1880s, marks COIN, PURE COIN, DOLLAR, D). 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 .999 minimum, referenced to the delivery standard of a regulated futures contract). Checked August 2026.