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Message:: [QUOTE="Joan, post: 9574142, member: 5398"]Evelyb30 is right that my old 18k acid did its job. I learned from others here that 18K acid is a good substitute for silver testing acid because the silver acid has such a short shelf life. Instead of dissolving a streak of silver metal, 18k acid turns it a milky blue color, which is shown in the photo above. The new 18k acid I bought isn't reacting the way it's supposed to, so it's worthless for testing silver. Since someone told me that old 18k acid loses its effectiveness, I felt I couldn't trust the results, so that's why I bought the silver acid and figured I'd do all the silver testing over the next week before the acid goes bad. I have some old-looking Native American silver jewelry that isn't marked, Mexican silver jewelry that's marked but questionable, unmarked pieces that could be hobbyist or student-made, possibly vintage 800 silver jewelry from India, etc. But after testing several pieces with the new silver acid for both known sterling and questionable pieces, I had such a difficult time seeing whether the colors of any of the tests were dark red or brown, I've come to the conclusion that my old 18k acid seems to be the most reliable way to test for silver, although I don't know if or how it works for 800 or 835 silver.[/QUOTE]