How to read a British hallmark

A hallmark is a small row of marks struck into the metal. It says what the metal is, who submitted the piece for testing, and which office tested it.

It takes a minute to read, and it is worth reading before anything leaves the house.

Rings: Inside the band
Pendants: On the bail, or on the back
Bracelets, necklaces: Beside the clasp, often on the clasp itself
Brooches: On the pin, the catch, or the reverse

A loupe helps. A phone camera at full zoom, held steady in daylight, usually does the same work.

Move the loupe across the three marks

The mark below is drawn, not photographed. The loupe follows the pointer, or a finger.

Read a hallmark

Type the mark on your piece

Hold the loupe over each of the three marks to see what that one says.
Type the figure you can read, or tap a shortcut. The number in the drawing changes with it.
If nothing matches, the mark may be worn, or it may not be a fineness mark at all.

Reading it yourself changes the conversation: you know what you own before you ask.

⬜ Manca: una macro di un punzone vero su un pezzo del cliente, da mettere qui accanto al disegno.

The three marks a British hallmark carries

They are struck together, in a row, and each one answers a different question.

Read them in order and you have the metal, the sponsor and the office that tested it.

Sponsor's mark: The registered initials of whoever submitted the piece for assay. No two sponsors share one.
Fineness mark: The metal, and how much of it is pure, in parts per thousand. 750 is 750 parts of gold in 1,000.
Assay office mark: The office that tested the piece. A leopard's head is London, an anchor Birmingham, a rose Sheffield, a castle Edinburgh.

Other marks are sometimes struck beside these three. They are read separately, and they do not replace them.

What the numbers mean: 375, 750, 925

The figure is parts of pure metal in a thousand. Carats say the same thing another way.

375: Gold · 9 carat
585: Gold · 14 carat
750: Gold · 18 carat
916: Gold · 22 carat
800: Silver
925: Silver · sterling
958: Silver · Britannia
850: Platinum
950: Platinum
500: Palladium
950: Palladium

Nine carat and eighteen carat are both gold. What changes is how much of the piece is gold.

One figure can belong to two metals: 950 is struck on platinum and on palladium alike.

So the number narrows it down. On its own, it does not name the metal.

When there is no mark

Not every old British piece carries one, and a bare piece settles nothing on its own.

A mark wears flat after years against a finger, and a repair can cover it over.

It may also sit where you have not looked: inside a clasp, under a bail, behind a pin.

Then the piece is read from what is left.

How it is put together, and the traces the tools left behind.
The cut of the stone, and the way the setting holds it.
The wear: where the metal has thinned, and where it has not.

Photograph the place where a mark would sit, even when it is bare. That is an answer too.

What not to do before a valuation

Do not polish it. Wear is evidence, and a cloth takes the evidence off.

On a soft, worn mark, polishing rounds away the edges that make it readable at all.

Leave the dirt in the engraving. It sits where the years put it.
Leave loose stones and old repairs as they are until the piece has been seen.
Do not straighten a bent pin, and do not have a worn band built back up.

A piece tells more before it is tidied than after.

The mark is dark and I cannot read it. Do I clean it?: No. Photograph it as it is. Dark metal in the recesses is often what makes a worn mark legible.
The figure on my piece is not in the table. What now?: Send a photograph of it. Foreign marks, older figures and part-worn strikes all turn up.

Photograph the mark, then send it

Daylight, a plain surface, the phone held steady, as close as the camera will focus.

The whole piece, seen from the front.
The mark itself, filling as much of the frame as it will.
The stone, if there is one.

If the mark will not come out sharp, send the frame anyway and say where it sits.

Send your photographs

⬜ Da verificare prima di pubblicare: tutto il contenuto tecnico di questa pagina — le tre marche, i simboli degli uffici di saggio e la tabella dei titoli — va confrontato con il sito dell'Assay Office e del British Hallmarking Council.