May 12, 2008
Look for silver linings in old silver
Before finishing the first paragraph about
antique silver in the Antiques Roadshow Primer, a book spawned from the popular PBS
series, you'll be downstairs pulling out all your family's fine silver to see if it is
indeed sterling silver and if it is valuable.
Apparently, silver is one of the easiest
things for the average person to recognize as real or fake, and to determine if it's an
antique or not. Who knew?
By turning over every serving dish, candle
stick, and engraved spoon, you can look for the tell-tale marks of quality silver. These
marks, called "hallmarks," are engravings stamped into antique sterling silver
which can link the current owner to the piece's past.
According to Carol Prisant, author of Antiques
Roadshow Primer, hallmarks were created in the fourteenth century to ensure against
goldsmith fraud. Silver pieces were stamped with hallmarks after they were analyzed for
their silver content in England's Goldsmiths' Hall -- thus the origin of the word.
Hallmarks come in many different varieties,
including the sterling standard mark of England, a maker's mark consisting of the
silversmiths' initials, the year of manufacture, or the office emblem where the silver
piece was analyzed and stamped.
Since all these symbols are different, it is
best to buy an antiqueing guide to assess certain marks, but generally if the marks are
there, you're in good shape.
What you don't want to see on the bottom of a
supposed silver piece is the engraving EPNS, or Electro-Plated-Nickel-Silver.
Basically, this means that the object is made
of a base metal and is merely coated with a layer of silver to make it seem more valuable
than it truly is. These pieces are quite deceiving because the outer silver layer acts
just like silver, shining when it is polished and tarnishing accordingly, but they are not
sterling silver and thus inconsequential in the world of antiques.
So before you head over to your local antique
mall and hope to have your silver appraised, check it out yourself. Prisant lists some
hints for at-home appraising:
- Check for hand-hammered evidence on the silver piece. This indicates that it is preindustrial in age.
- Three-pronged forks are usually older than 1770, the year in which forks mostly shifted to four-prongs.
- Be careful not to mistake an engraved date for the date of manufacture. The engraving is probably to commemorate an achievement, put on by an owner after the piece was created.
- Usually in terms of silver, the heavier the better, but be wary of silver pieces that are weighed down internally to make them appear more valuable.
- Southern silver, like that made in Virginia back in the day, is rare and thus valuable.
Copyright © 2008, The Virginia Gazette
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