How To Read Jewelry Hallmarks

Jewelry is often stamped with a hallmark so you can easily identify your jewelry. Just as real coin pendants retain the coin mintmarks for easy mint identification. Real coin mintmarks and real jewelry hallmarks make identification easy.

There are numerous stamps for jewelry and coins, and some are harder to make out than others, but the maker’s marks help identify the maker. If you want to know:
“What is my jewelry made of?”
“Where was my real coin made?”
then you need to locate the identifying marks called hallmarks and mintmarks respectively.

A mintmark is typically a letter or symbol in a predetermined location on the field of a coin. The mintmark indicates which mint produced the coin. To further complicate matters, sometimes, the lack of a mintmark indicates which mint produced the coin!

A maker’s mark is typically a symbol placed in an unobtrusive place on your item. Fine China and Silver tableware have beautiful maker’s marks on the back side of dishes and platters.

On jewelry, a hallmark is typically a symbol or number stamped in an inconspicuous spot. Sometimes hallmarks are three-digit numbers, a combination of numbers and letters, or perhaps a two-digit number.

To find the maker’s mark, mint mark, or hallmark on jewelry, look inside the band of a ring, on the back of a brooch, at the coin on a real coin pendant, and on the inside of a bracelet for identifying marks. Sometimes jewelers will stamp tags attached by a ring.

Once you locate the identifying jewelry mark, examine the following list to find out what your jewelry is made of. If you are looking for help with a coin’s mintmark, send us a note and we will see what we can discover.

SILVER HALLMARKS
700, 70% silver, commonly called coin silver, although some coins have more silver and other coins have less silver.
800, 80% silver, commonly called jewelry silver, although some silver jewelry has a higher silver content and some has a lower silver content.
925, 92.5% silver, commonly called Sterling Silver. All .925 silver is Sterling Silver, an industry standard of jewelry quality.
958, 95.8% silver, commonly called Britannia Silver, although some jewelers consider anything greater than .925 silver content to be Fine Silver.
999, 99.9% silver, commonly called Fine, or Pure Silver. This is the purest of Silver jewelry. It is not at 100% because silver is too soft to stand alone. Silver has to be alloyed for strength and durability, especially in fine jewelry work, like small link chains and ring settings.

GOLD HALLMARKS
Gold is even softer than silver and is typically alloyed for strength.
333, 8k gold, this is 8 parts gold and 16 parts stabilizing metal. 8k gold is about 33% gold.
375, 9k gold, this is 9 parts gold and 15 parts stabilizing metal, about 37.5% gold.
416 or 417, 10k gold, this is 10 parts gold and 14 parts stabilizing metal, about 41.7% gold.
500, 12k gold, this is 12 parts gold and 12 parts stabilizing metal, about 50% gold.
583 or 585, 14k gold, this is 14 parts gold and 10 parts stabilizing metal, about 58.3% gold.
75, 18k gold, this is 18 parts gold and 6 parts stabilizing metal, about 75% gold.
916 or 917, 22k gold, this is 22 parts gold and 2 parts stabilizing metal, about 91.7% gold.
999, 24k gold, this is pure gold.

It is important to know that metal mixing sometimes results in an uneven mix, where more gold or more stabilizing metal is in a single spot. If the bubble of gold, or bubble of stabilizing metal is not visible there is no way for your jeweler to know about it. That is why each of these measurements is “about” a percentage of real gold, rather than an “absolute” percentage of real gold.

PLATINUM HALLMARKS
850, 85% fine platinum
900, 90% fine platinum
950, 95% fine platinum
999, 99.9% fine platinum

Why isn’t platinum measured in karats? Karats are a standard of gold measurement in the US, and as such karats only apply to gold.

Carats, on the other hand, are a standard of weight in the metric system. You can weigh anything in carats. One kilogram of carrots is the same as 5,000 carats of carrots, and 1 pound of carrots is about the same as 2,268 carats of carrots.

I hope this article helped you learn about your treasure!

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If you see a mystery mintmark, maker’s mark, or hallmark, visit Antique Jewelry University’s Online visual database to search for more details!

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