Featured Turquoise & green gem silver cross

Wondering where and when the ‘Sterling Silver’ mark was used rather than the 925? Is it still used today in some countries or is the 925 (or variants of) standard worldwide?
Opaque stones test as gemstone so I’m presuming turquoise and the green I think are glass. They are unusually iridescent and really catch the light, wondering if foil backed? One is darker so maybe the foil has been damaged.
Any information would be great please.
It’s c2.5cm tall.
Thankyou

 

What counts as a gemstone, anything that is quartz or harder? I know what these gem testers measure is not hardness, but it seems to work as a proxy for it. Genuine turquoise is quite soft relative to most things we consider semi-precious (& way softer than ones we consider precious), so I would not expect it to give a reading comparable to, say, amethyst or cornelian. But glass comes pretty close.

I haven't bought any good silver in a long while; most of what I have is inherited. Seems to me, though, that here in the US we still mark things 'sterling' rather than 925. Maybe another Yank will come along & correct me on that.

 

The 925 mark tends to be modern. This is confusing. The stones look like glass from here. I'd test the silver just to be sure of what it is.

 

A number of companies and designers started using 925 in the late 1990's.Many still use sterling and some NA silversmiths have been using both on the same piece.

 

925 goes way back, even to the early twentieth here.

it may well be British, we did use that, especially on Scottish pieces. And yours looks Scottish.

 

Did Mary reveal a Mohs scale hardness, or wasn't she up to that? Turquoise is 6-ish. The difference in colours and shades also point to real turquoise, and also to older, before widespread colour matching.

Could be.

The earliest I know of is late 19th century.

 

The "turquoise' stones look like glass to me also

 

I find it odd that it says Sterling silver since most simple mark sterling. I have mentioned that here in rural Missouri I get many sterling pieces of jewelry cheap because it is marked 925 and they do not know it is sterling. I purchase two rings ( cheap) that were marked Sterling China. Turned out that there was a Chinese company called sterling that was producing those rings. The turquoise stones look glass to me as well. Maybe because they are too shiny. Most of my turquoise has an almost matt or satin finish.

 

I've run into a company called Sterling too. Their work wasn't silver.

 

Sorry for the radio silence, busy day.
The centre stones are definitely glass, the others I have no idea about as Mary is totally indecisive. She says glass, I recalibrate and she says gemstone and then test again and it’s glass.
I don’t know how she works, some sort of thermal thing I think although I think Mary just works on blind guesses, throwing a pin into a gemologist book, smoke and mirrors and her trusty crystal ball.
I’ve learned not not take any notice of her WAG’s as to what type of stone it is unless it’s the easy ones like diamond, Ruby, garnet, emerald,sapphire and amethyst where she is very reliable. I don’t think she tries very hard with semi precious stuff . She’s normally dead on with glass too but not with this.
It does test as silver although the chain isn’t.

 

I was thinking that also. Trying to recall whether I've ever seen "Sterling Silver" on piece of jewelry.

 

I have, quite a bit.