Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MrNate, post: 3377218, member: 5515&quot;]Thank you [USER=301]@komokwa[/USER], though I&#039;m quite certain you solved the puzzle completely, I would be happy to reveal and share all the details.</p><p><br /></p><p>So komokwa was 100% right that one of the response options &quot;I know a country too&quot; was a good clue. But before we get there, let&#039;s just make some observations about the pieces themselves as it is always the photo that deserves foremost attention:</p><p><br /></p><p>- As mentioned by others, the pieces appear thinly made (this is a good sign in my opinion). My experience is often when items are plated, the manufacturer seeks to make them look more luxurious, larger and heavier, but when working with a precious metal, they do their best to conserve how much silver they use.</p><p><br /></p><p>- The <u>TONE</u> of the silver jumped off the page to me. We have tarnish growing in the cracks and crevices, we have that dull glow that is often seen with tarnished real silver. We have tarnish even &quot;growing&quot; in those dents. And we have abstract/random tarnish marks appearing (as opposed to silverplate which often tarnishes uniformly).</p><p><br /></p><p>-The backs of the pieces have striations of tarnish which I&#039;ve often seen with real silver, and I would describe the tarnish on the back as more brown than red (compared to silver on copper items which often turn reddish) and still non-uniform tarnish.</p><p><br /></p><p>-A subtle clue: notice most of the pieces have that slight dot in the center of the back? I know this has something to do with the manufacturing process of pieces, and I&#039;ve seen it many times on foreign pieces. Just one more piece of the puzzle, although nothing conclusive from that one observation.</p><p><br /></p><p>So...this all sounds great, but there&#039;s just one problem, <u>I DON&#039;T SEE ANY MARKS!!!!</u> And for most of us, that&#039;s a problem. Silver is marked most of the time, and anything without marks is a BIG GAMBLE. So what I&#039;d like to show you is how to take that big gamble down to a much smaller gamble on these pieces:</p><p><br /></p><p>A tiny clue got me started on a search, observe the circled area:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]300902[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Turns out (in hindsight, I didn&#039;t know this at the time) that&#039;s the backside of silver marks. But seeing it made me think I should try to think of countries that like to put small hidden marks on there pieces. Back in 2020 you may remember I had a nice plate from Portugal, and I remembered tiny marks along the edge. So armed with that information, I went to trusty google to recall the marks and I recalled a bird with 833 marks. Next I went to google to see what other real silver pieces looked like from Portugal, and that&#039;s where I found a wonderful connection between these pieces. Observe the following photos from google, and what we observe is that the style of these pieces (shells, the columns etc) is often used in Portuguese silver pieces. We even observe on the last google image the style of piercing bowls is similar to the one in my photos:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]300905[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300906[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300907[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300908[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>So armed with that information, I made the gamble (with less risk of course with this new knowledge), and here&#039;s the marks on the pieces I received. Note that all of these are 833 silver and total weight is 952 grams. <b><u>That&#039;s the end of the game, thank you for all that gave it a shot and I look forward to hearing the observations you made too!</u></b></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]300909[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300910[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300911[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300912[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]300913[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in