What Does The "925" in 925 Silver Mean?

This is a question we are frequently asked by our customers at Ciao Bambino. 925 is the number that is put in front the word “silver”. As a customer you need to know exactly what that number represents and that the piece of jewellery you are buying conforms to the 925 standard. So I’ll try to explain...

Pure silver on its own is too weak and malleable to be used for crafting functional, hard wearing jewellery and when it’s warm it gets bendy. A little like making jewellery from plasticene. To make it more workable and long lasting, craftsmen add a copper alloy to the silver to strengthen it so it can be used to make earrings, necklaces, pendants, bracelets, bangles and rings.

They use a blend of 7.5% copper and 92.5% silver (see what they did there? Genius).

You’d think that adding another metal to the copper would lower the quality, but in fact it enhances the properties of the silver and it's only a small part of the combination anyway.

You can check that the item you are buying is genuine 925 silver by checking the hallmark. More about hallmarking soon...that’s a whole other blog entirely.

So, to summarise, the 925 means that the jewellery you are buying is of the highest quality.

I hope that makes things a little clearer.

Anna
xx

www.ciao-bambino.co.uk