Featured It's been a busy week

Good evening everyone!

I had a tremendous week in my continued hunt for silver and I expect I'll have a number of finds to show you. I wanted to start with a small find from today. This purchase was made purely on intuition as I didn't see any marks on the piece prior to purchasing it. The piece was listed as silverplated and was less than $10. Once I purchased it and looked it over I found the 800 Italian silver marks. Weight was 112 grams and I hope you enjoy the photos!

 

I'll buy that kind of silver plate any day, all day!

 

Me too @evelyb30 ...real silver is my favorite type of silverplate I can't wait to show the rest of my purchases this week....It's been really good, I just get a bit cautious before items actually arrive in the mail.

 

This weekend was a dead loss, almost, thanks to Henri.

 

One of my purchases was from that part of the country. The seller let me know in advance they would have to wait for Henri to subside before shipping so I'm hoping it doesn't delay them too much as it is an amazing purchase.

 

What Is 800 Silver?
800 silver is real silver with a relatively high purity. The number 800 refers to its level of purity, and it means that your silver item is 80% silver and 20% alloy.
One of the advantages of 800 silver is that it's more durable than sterling.
You can call it "coin silver".

 

Hallmarks of Italian silver of 20th century (silvercollection.it)

Hallmarking was optional to Italian silversmiths. Usually 800 was stamped to indicate the purity.

In 1934 they added another lozenge containing a number to identify the silversmith, a fiasco (the fascist party symbol), and 2 letters (initials of the province it was made in).

The two lozenges on your item are too close together.

 

Great info thank you for sharing!

 

Please note that 900 silver is "coin silver"; 800 silver is NOT.

 

Don't know where you got this idea. Not true.

 

Coin silver is whatever went into the coins used to make the silver piece. In American silver it's been standardized to .900 in the 20th century, but for older pieces and things made elsewhere it's anyone's guess. The Italians and others used a lot of .800 for tablewares and went higher for jewelry. (except for the stuff for the dumb tourists who didn't know better, who got .800 silver souvenir jewelry.)

 

sweet piece Mr Nate, can't wait to see the other goodies your found

 

Thank you cxgirl, hopefully a few of the purchases arrive in the mail tomorrow and I can discuss them

 

I got obsessed today with a free app I found called PhotoRoom, I can't seem to get over how easily it removes the background on photos. Here's the photos I took of the candlestick using the app I was able to make these in less than 5 minutes:

 

I'm going to check-out Photoroom, MrNate, thanks for the tip. Your examples are AWESOME!!!

 

One stamp was simply '800', and then another stamp to identify the maker and where he made made it was made nearly on top of it, making it look like the same stamp.

 

This is where I got that in formation from:
What Is 800 Silver? (reference.com)

 

There is no rule that requires a certain distance between the fineness stamp and the official lozenge. In fact, the one that was most important under the law is fully visible. The fineness mark is not official and was not stamped by assayers. The only thing that's slightly obscured is the second zero in 800. No harm, no foul.

And I strongly suggest that you get your information from a reputable source in future. Who the heck is "reference.com?"

 

The internet is filled with misinformation, and that source you reference is sort of amazing in its confidently stated nonsense regarding the use of .800 silver, the use of the term 'coin silver', and the ridiculous assertion that "Silver with an 800 grade is, however, used in silver plating because it can withstand a high firing temperature.", which shows the 'Staff Writer' has no knowledge of the plating process at all. You do little service in passing on misinformation with equal confidence...

~Cheryl