Hallmarks

• Testing gold How to Tell If Gold Is Real: Seven Tests, Ranked Seven ways to check whether jewelry is solid gold, from the ones you can do at home in a minute to the ones that require a laboratory, with what each one actually proves.
• Hallmarks How to Read Hallmarks on Gold and Silver What each punch in a hallmark means, where to find the marks on a piece, how to read British, French, German, Scandinavian and Russian systems, and when a stamp guarantees nothing.
• Fineness What 375, 585, 750 and 925 Mean on Jewelry Every fineness figure you will meet on gold, silver and platinum, what each one converts to in carats, which countries use it and what it tells you about age and origin.

Every country solved the same problem differently, and only some of them thought to record the year. These pages give the system, the marks, what can be dated from them and where the traps are. 7 of the 22 systems below will give you a year.

• Dates a piece · from 1300 United Kingdom The oldest continuous hallmarking system in the world and the only one that routinely gives you the exact year. If your piece carries a full British hallmark, you can date it to twelve months.
• Dates a piece · from 1637 Ireland Dublin has assayed since 1637 and dates its work, so Irish pieces can be read as precisely as British ones.
• No date mark · from 1838 France The most rigorous Continental system and the smallest marks. French punches are frequently under a millimetre and are struck where they will not show, so a loupe is not optional.
• No date mark · from 1888 Germany One law in 1888 replaced centuries of independent city marks with a single national mark. That gives you a hard floor: a crescent and crown cannot appear on anything made before 1888.
• Dates a piece · from 1608 Denmark Denmark dates its silver, and does so in plain digits rather than letters, which makes it the easiest Continental system to read. Three towers over the number 24 means 1924.
• Dates a piece · from 1689 Sweden Sweden dates its work with a letter and a numeral together, a combination no other country uses, so Swedish pieces announce themselves before you have decoded anything.
• No date mark · from nineteenth century Norway Norway does not date-mark, so Norwegian silver is dated by maker and by style. The makers are well documented, which makes this easier than it sounds.
• Dates a piece · from 1810 Finland Finland dates its work with a letter and number system similar to Sweden's, and uses the letter H for silver, which is the fastest way to recognise a Finnish piece.
• Dates a piece · from 1814 Netherlands The Dutch system dates its work and uses a lion for silver, with a numeral distinguishing the two standards. Dutch 833 silver is a national signature.
• No date mark · from seventeenth century Russia and the Soviet Union Russian marks are read in two eras with 1917 between them, and the imperial kokoshnik mark narrows a piece to a nine year window by which way the woman's head is facing.
• No date mark · from 1806 Austria and Hungary The Habsburg lands changed their marking system repeatedly, which means the exact variant matters more here than almost anywhere else.
• No date mark · from 1968 Italy Modern Italian marks identify the manufacturer by number and the province by two letters, which means an Italian piece can often be traced to a specific workshop.
• No date mark · from 1880 Switzerland Swiss marks are most often met on watch cases, where they date the case far more precisely than the movement inside it does.
• No date mark · from 1906 United States There is no assay office and never has been. American marks are claims made by the maker and enforced after the fact, not guarantees tested in advance.
• No date mark · from 1948 Mexico Mexican silver is dated by which registration system its mark belongs to, and the systems changed twice in the twentieth century.
• No date mark · from 1887 Portugal Portugal marks by assay office with animal and head figures, and uses gold standards that are unusually high by European standards.
• No date mark · from 1934 Spain Spanish marking was regional and inconsistent until the twentieth century, so most Spanish antique jewelry is identified by construction rather than by mark.
• Dates a piece · from 2000 India Indian hallmarking is recent and voluntary until it became compulsory for gold jewelry, which means almost all antique Indian work is unmarked.
• No date mark · from nineteenth century China and Hong Kong Chinese export silver of 1850 to 1940 carries marks designed to look British, which is the single most common misidentification in the whole field.
• No date mark · from 1928 Japan Japanese hallmarking is voluntary and modern, so Meiji and earlier work is identified by technique rather than by mark.
• No date mark · from eighteenth century Turkey and the Ottoman Empire Ottoman silver carries the sultan's monogram, which identifies the reign and therefore gives a date range without any letters or numbers being involved.
• No date mark · from 1972 International marks Some marks belong to no country. The Convention hallmark is recognised across member states, which is convenient for trade and unhelpful for attribution.