Silver over copper butter dish

I spend many of many hours trying to find more information about this dish. It really looks old to me and thought it might be a butter dish. I do not know the pattern, who made it, when it was made or what it is made of. I saw something either on tv or computer that showed a different dish where the expert explained to the collector that their dish was made out of copper with missing silver from wear. As you can see from my two pictures the top is really worn off silver and the bottom still has the silver over top of the copper. The expert knew it was copper because of the greenish color tarnish. Here are a few pictures of the item. Thank you for your assistance in this request. Rob

 

Oh dear, that poor tray (what is the length? looks more like a bread tray than butter dish) has seen much better days. Probably 20's to 30's from the decor. I can just make out MADE IN on the underside, but given condition it really doesn't matter.

Unless the front surface is tarnished rather than polished to death (you could try a gentle cleaning with a liquid or cream silver polish to see if that's the case) it appears to be beyond help and unfortunately worth very little if anything.

 

Its around 9 to 10 inches in length. Rob

 

Definitely for bread then.

 

Cheap import from Japan for the 5 and dime in the thirties. The base metal was not pure enough copper and that is why the nickel plating didn't stay on it well.

 

Does nickel plating oxide silver greenish color? rknarr2

 

The green is from the copper sulfide coming through the thin plating