Jewelry Education

Silver

Although silver is classified as a precious metal, however, in reality it is a fraction of the value of gold and platinum. Silver is much more plentiful than gold. Similar to pure gold and platinum, pure silver is far too soft to use for jewelry manufacturing, so it is also alloyed to improve its properties. Silver has a predominant quality known as “sterling”. For an item to be marked as sterling, it must contain a minimum of 92.5% pure silver alloyed with 7.6% copper.

While silver is the whitest of metals, has the highest reflectivity and is therefore the most lustrous. The main problem with sterling silver is that it is prone to tarnish. To prevent this problem, silver can be rhodium plated in the same way as white gold.