Guides
How to read what is stamped on the bottom
A hallmark, a backstamp or a country name will often date a piece more precisely than anything else about it. These are the marks worth learning, and every date below carries the authority it came from.
Start here · 8 min How to read a British silver hallmark The four marks on British silver, what each one does, and how to read them in the right order — with the assay offices' own tables behind every date.
Silver · 5 min Assay office marks — leopard, anchor, crown, rose Which town tested a piece of silver, and what to do when the office mark belongs to one that closed. The four open offices and the ones that are not. Pottery · 6 min Dating a piece by its country mark What England, Made in England, Nippon, Occupied Japan and West Germany each bracket — and why a country mark is a floor rather than a date. Silver · 6 min EPNS, silver plate and sterling EPNS means electroplated nickel silver and contains no sterling at all. How to tell plate from solid silver, and why plate carries no hallmark. Silver · 5 min Silver date letters, and the shield around them A date letter gives the exact year a piece was assayed — but only against the right office's table. How the cycles work and the mistake most people make. Valuing · 5 min What an auction result actually says Estimate, hammer price and buyer's premium are three different numbers. Which one is evidence of value, and why comparing the wrong pair misleads. Silver · 5 min What the lion passant on silver actually means The walking lion on English silver means sterling — .925 — and nothing else. What it does not tell you, and what the Britannia mark means instead.
Why every date here has a link after it. Most of what is written about
antique marks online is repeated from other pages that repeated it from somewhere else,
and a wrong year travels as easily as a right one. Where the authorities disagree — and on
one date below they do — this says so rather than picking the tidier answer.