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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Any Jewelry, post: 320635, member: 2844&quot;]With that amount of rubbing, a base metal would show.</p><p><br /></p><p>Do you have a way to test them?</p><p>Hanau used different finenesses, these look like they could be .835.</p><p>.835 was based on the Austrian coin &#039;Maria Theresia Taler&#039; (MTT silver, actually .833), which for a long time was the most reliable source of silver. For that reason it was the standard in many countries of the world, so .835 is not to be sneezed at.<img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/wink.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=";)" unselectable="on" /></p><p>For a long time MTT silver was much more reliable than sterling, which was based on the &#039;pond oosterling&#039; a Dutch term for certain German silver coins. Oosterling means Easterner, Germany is to the east of the Netherlands.</p><p>The Brits, who traded a lot with the Dutch, read oosterling as 00sterling and dropped the 00 as superfluous. That is how the term &#039;sterling&#039; came into use. A standard based on illiteracy.<img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/biggrin.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":D" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>One of the first things I noticed, and those are vulnerable. Silver uses them himself, so it is not much of a problem, and probably not very noticeable during a dinner when you don&#039;t look at them sideways anyway.</p><p>If they were silverplate, the break would show base metal.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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