Silverware , how to test Sterling Silver

If it says Sterling Silver , its a good chance that it is in fact sterling ? And I thought that it had to say 925 over 1000 or something like that. I guess I have to make a trip back to my local thrift shop and pick up that unbelievably too good to be true deal "YC348" and "665" sounds like serial numbers. Silver usually is stamped "750". "800", "835", "925" or "Sterling".Density wont always work, you'll never get the same exact values, its not all pure silver so you'll be off a little bit depending on composition the unknown silver alloy/mixture or plating. Nitric acid works for the reason Silver is high on the reactivity series, more "reactive" than most elements producing a white precipitate in the reaction.the green is copper oxide like the statue of liberty. And the silver oxide is white. Nitric acid is very aggressive oxidant. They use the same shit to test gold. The thing is that all the copy-metals they use are not gold or silver and so they corrode and nitric acid is a rapid oxidant so you can see quickly what you are looking at. You cant make that shit up. Its just the nature
That cup had YC348. I wonder if that means it's 34.8% silver, and so there would be 65.2% copper.
Older stuff from the 19th century sometimes is stamped "12" or "13". That's an old measurement for silver content based on 16 ("lot") parts for fine silver. So "12" means 12/16 = 75 percent and "13" means 13/16 = 81,3 percent silver.

But take care since often the real silver content of these "12" and "13" stamped pieces is much lower than it should be...
if you have a large enough container with measurements then you can just find the ratio between the volume increase of water after putting the object into the container by the weight of the object to determine its density. if it has the density of silver then its silver.



He is a jewler he uses the acid test for gold silver you name it this is the least expensive way to test the purity of the metal. With gold at record highs you buy one piece of fake gold and you just erased your profit margin for a while you need to know what you are doing. Also least we forget there are peope that will show up with stolen stuff at what point do you think they are gonna click and say hey lets just rob him? Sure there is money to be made and there are graves to be filled.
MAKE SURE YOU GET PHYSICAL SILVER IN YOUR OWN POSSESSION. Don't Buy SLV, or Futures or Pooled Accounts or any other BS paper silver product .Remember anything on paper is worth the paper it is written on. Go Long Stay long the bull market have even started yet