Help with a Small Mexican Silver Spoon

Found this in a lot of cups and saucers of all places. I think it might be a demitasse spoon. When I got it, I thought it was plate or something else not too interesting. But when I cleaned it up, it's obviously not plated but something nicer. The only mark is on the back and it says what looks like "Silver Mexico". The spoon is 4" long. Not great photos, my gear is packed up till after Christmas so this was a quickie shot with too many shadows. Is it sterling or some other silver mix? TY!

 

Mexico has had marking standards for sterling for quite some time. This looks like a marking meant to deceive.

 

At 4" it should be a demitasse, ola. But I agree with Terry that this is unlikely to be made to be with actual silver.

 

They first letter of the word containing also "ilver" isn't an "S" so what is it?

 

Milver is a place in Mexico...

Edit - or used to be... may be a ghost town now. Milver is also a fairly common surname of Spanish-speakers.

 

Agreed. But I can't really see, even with a loupe, what the letter is. It looks like it may be an incomplete stamp, like there should be more off the left, but it was stamped carelessly, too far down on the handle.

 

Really!? Cause I thought the letter looked like an M maybe. Do they make silver in Milver? LOL!

 

No idea, Ola!

by the way, when I saw "help with a small Mexican" in the Recent Topics, I had to giggle... I thought "Somebody needs help with ME? Get in line!"

 

If it was really silver, wouldn't it have to either be marked "Sterling" or the purity, like .990?

 

Here is a link to the 925-1000 site with descriptions of Mexican silver marks. They seem to show one similar to yours as dating 1920s-1940s and say that while it varies it's often above .925 purity. Anyway...that's all I got.

http://www.925-1000.com/mexican_marks.html

 

I don't see the design or mark as being that age. Apparently I recently got rid of the silverplate cups I had with the same mark from the eighties.

 

Interesting. I had not noticed that before. Other marks like "Nevada Silver," "Alaska Silver" etc. are alloys containing no silver at all, just as "nickel silver" and german silver do not. So used to seeing them, I assumed this was the same.

 

The old pre-1948 marks could look like this. I'd test it, but I'm betting it's 900 or better. Sometimes they were working with old coins, and the silver was whatever percentage the coins were.

 

It weighs a half ounce (0.5) so I'm not sure that's worth having tested. If someone will do it for free, based on my selling it to them, then I'll do it. There are several places close by that I can check. Thanks for your comments, everyone!