Featured SS mark equals “Sneaky Silver”

I am out today hunting a few stores to wrap up the week. I went to a store I visit infrequently that hasn’t given me any silver before. I grab this plate that looks nice and yellow, feeling in my hands it seemed bendy like sterling silver should be. I look all over it for a proper mark and it took me a while but I see it is stamped SS on the side which I think is sterling silver. I will know for sure when I take it home and acid test it later, but I’m pretty confident it’s real.

 

I love it. It is from India.

 

Thank you Any Jewelry, that was my suspicion on origin. I’ll get some better photos later and weight.

 

Indian silver is hot right now in Britain. Or was recently. I'd say that's a score.

 

The few samples of Indian silver I've purchased, which were from the days of the Raj, were stamped S.S. for sterling silver. A few are just stamped "SILVER" and have a maker's mark.

 

Here are some better pictures and the weight. I decided against a destructive acid test, instead I opted for testing it with an ice cube and a magnet. In both instances, it reacted like sterling should. I tried to polish this one very gently to maintain the detail of work. I hope you enjoy the photos!

 

That sniffer is in prime condition! Way to root it out! Another beautiful piece.

 

Really beautiful. Time to treat your nose to something nice, take it out for a meal or something.

 

Ice cube and magnet to test silver, how does that work?

 

I think some of that info was in recent post “pieces of eight”
Nope, that’s the magnet trick. I’ll keep looking.

 

The idea with the ice test is that silver is a very good conductor of heat - therefore ice placed on sterling silver will immediately start to melt, and melt rather quickly, much more quickly than placing it on other metals that might look like silver (aluminum or stainless steel or silver plated items etc...)

 

Great video and explanation aaroncab,

I would add one further piece of information in my decision to try the ice cube method on this item. I know that copper also has a fairly good level of conductivity, so it could certainly be possible to be fooled by this test. Given that the fine experts on this board pointed to India as the likely point of origin, I felt more confident with the ice test. The reason I felt confident is because most (if not all) of the silver plated items I've seen from india are silver on brass. Brass happens to have a much lower level of conductivity, so the difference between sterling silver and silver over brass would have been noticeable. Here's a video showing a time laps of ice melting on copper, aluminum and brass:

 

Cool, thanks all around.

 

Knowledge is power, we know the method of thermal conductivity. However, it is really briliant for the first person to apply it into reality of testing sterling