In this guide
Gold has one number that everybody in Tamil Nadu knows. Silver has a dozen, they come from a dozen different countries and centuries, and nobody explains them at the counter because the piece is usually inexpensive enough that nobody asks.
That is a mistake on a kuthuvilakku — the tall oil lamp — or on a heavy vessel, where the metal is most of what you are paying for. It is also how people end up owning something that says silver on it and holds none.
This page is the chart. Screenshot it, keep it, bring it to a counter.
The silver purity chart
Every silver fineness mark is the same idea: how many parts out of a thousand are pure silver. A mark of 925 means 925 parts silver and 75 parts something else, almost always copper. That is the whole system, and once you have it, every number below reads itself.
| Mark | Silver content | Common name | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 999 | 99.9% | Fine silver | Bars, bullion coins, investment silver |
| 990 | 99.0% | — | A BIS-recognised Indian grade; soft, so used for articles rather than daily-wear jewellery |
| 970 | 97.0% | — | A BIS-recognised Indian grade; silverware and vessels |
| 958 | 95.8% | Britannia silver | British; higher than sterling, and strictly 95.84%. Compulsory in Britain 1697–1720, optional ever since |
| 950 | 95.0% | French first standard | French silver, and some studio and designer work |
| 925 | 92.5% | Sterling silver | The world's jewellery standard; British in origin, now near-universal |
| 916 | 91.66% | 88 zolotnik silver | Historic Russian silver — not an Indian silver grade (see below) |
| 900 | 90.0% | Coin silver | American coinage and the silverware melted from it |
| 875 | 87.5% | 84 zolotnik silver | Historic Russian silver, very common on antique Russian pieces |
| 835 | 83.5% | — | Continental: the Netherlands, parts of Germany, Scandinavia |
| 830 | 83.0% | — | Scandinavian silver |
| 800 | 80.0% | — | Germany, Italy, Austria and much of Continental Europe |
One habit saves time with this chart: read the number as a decimal. 925 is 0.925, and plenty of pieces are stamped exactly that way, as .925.
What BIS recognises in India
India has its own list, and it is shorter than the chart above. The Bureau of Indian Standards sets silver fineness under IS 2112, and the standard was revised in 2025. The revision, IS 2112:2025, recognises seven purity grades.
| BIS grade | Silver content | Typically used for |
|---|---|---|
| 999 | 99.9% | Bars and coins; added in the 2025 revision |
| 990 | 99.0% | High-fineness articles |
| 970 | 97.0% | Silverware and vessels |
| 958 | 95.8% | Britannia standard; added in the 2025 revision |
| 925 | 92.5% | Sterling; almost all silver jewellery |
| 835 | 83.5% | Utensils and heavier ornaments |
| 800 | 80.0% | The lowest grade BIS will hallmark |
The 2025 revision added 958 and 999. The standard it replaced, IS 2112:2014, listed six grades — 800, 835, 900, 925, 970 and 990 — and that older six is still what the BIS consumer hallmarking FAQ shows, because that page has not been updated for the revision. Published summaries of the new list also disagree with each other about 900: some drop it, some keep it and drop 990 instead. So treat the 990/900 line as the one row in this table to check rather than trust, and take the rest as settled.
None of that makes a piece stamped 900 suspect. It makes it older, or foreign, or made to a grade the current Indian standard may no longer carry — which changes what a hallmarking centre can do with it, not what the metal is.
The standard fixes the fineness. It does not dictate what each grade must be made into, so treat the third column as trade practice rather than law. In practice the ornament silver and the vessel silver on a Tamil counter are alloyed differently, because a kolusu — an anklet — and an abhishekam vessel are asked to do very different jobs.
A hallmarked article carries three marks: the BIS standard mark carrying the word SILVER, the purity grade, and a six-digit alphanumeric HUID. The HUID is the part that makes it checkable — enter it in the BIS Care app and you get the article type, the purity grade, the date of hallmarking, the testing centre and the jeweller's registration number.
The one-sentence version
In India the hallmarkable range runs from 800 at the bottom to 999 at the top, and 925 does nearly all the ornament work. Everything else on the world chart above is foreign, historic, or simply somebody's stamp.
The words and letters, not just the numbers
Half the marks on silver are not numbers at all. Sterling in particular is written in about six different ways depending on who made the piece and where, and all six mean the same 92.5%.
| Mark | What it claims | What it actually proves |
|---|---|---|
| 925 | 92.5% silver — sterling | Nothing on its own; it is a stamp, not a test |
| .925 / 92.5 / 925/1000 | Identical to 925 | Same — punctuation is style, not substance |
| S925 | Sterling, 92.5% — the S is for sterling | Same as 925; common on imported and factory work |
| STERLING | 92.5% silver, written out | Same as 925; typical of North American pieces |
| STER / STG / SIL | Abbreviations of sterling | Same as 925 |
| SS | Sterling silver | Same claim, but the least specific stamp of the set |
| BIS mark + grade + HUID | Tested fineness, traceable to a centre | An independent test — the only mark in this table that is one |
The marks that mean no silver at all
Some of the most silver-sounding words in the trade describe metals that contain no silver whatsoever. This is not a modern scam — most of these names are two hundred years old and were never intended to deceive. They deceive now because nobody explains them.
| Mark or name | What it actually is | Silver content |
|---|---|---|
| German silver | A white alloy of copper, nickel and zinc — typically around 60% copper | None |
| Nickel silver | The same alloy under its technical name | None |
| Alpaca / Alpacca | The same alloy, sold under a trade name | None |
| Argentan · New silver · Maillechort | Again the same alloy, in older and French-market naming | None |
| EPNS | Electroplated nickel silver — a thin silver skin over that base alloy | Only the plating |
| EP | Electroplate; the base metal is not stated | Only the plating |
| EPBM | Electroplated Britannia metal — plating over a tin alloy | Only the plating |
| Britannia metal | A pewter-like alloy of tin with antimony and copper | None |
| A1 | A maker's own plate-quality grade, not a fineness | Only the plating |
The plated marks are worth separating from the base-metal ones. A piece marked EPNS does carry real silver — as a coating, measured in microns, with no bullion value. Good Victorian and Edwardian EPNS can be genuinely valuable as an antique. It is simply not valuable as silver, and no jeweller will weigh it against the silver rate.
The two Britannia traps
Britannia silver is 958 — nearly 96% silver. Britannia metal is tin, and holds none. The same is true of the word German: 835 is a genuine Continental standard meaning 83.5% real silver, while "German silver" means no silver at all. Read the number, not the adjective.
Where 916 fits on silver
In India, 916 is a gold number, and seeing it on something sold as silver should make you slow down. On gold it means 22 carat — 91.6% pure — and it is stamped on the great majority of Indian gold ornaments. We have set out what 916 and BIS hallmarking actually mean on gold separately.
916 does exist as a silver fineness, but historically and elsewhere: it is the 88-zolotnik Russian standard, 91.66% silver, and you meet it on antique Russian work. It is not one of the seven grades BIS recognises, and no Indian hallmarking centre will mark silver to it.
So if a piece described as silver carries 916 and nothing else, there are three sober possibilities and only one of them is Russian: it is a gold mark on a gold piece somebody has mislabelled, it is antique imported silver, or the stamp was chosen because 916 is a number Indian buyers trust. Ask which.
A stamp is a claim, not a test
A chart can tell you what a number would mean. It cannot tell you whether the number is true. That is an uncomfortable sentence for a jeweller to write, and every row above it depends on your knowing it.
A fineness stamp is applied by whoever made the piece, with a steel punch that costs very little. Nothing about the act of stamping involves testing the metal. On gold this matters less than it used to, because hallmarking is mandatory in the notified districts of India and each ornament carries a HUID you can verify yourself.
Silver has no such backstop. The HUID scheme reached silver on 1 September 2025, but on a voluntary footing, and BIS is still working out what a mandatory regime would take. Until it does, a great deal of perfectly honest Indian silver carries no hallmark at all — which is precisely why a 925 stamp has to be read as a description rather than a certificate.
Plating makes this harder still. Most quick checks read the surface, and a plated piece has a genuinely silver surface — which is why the home tests people run on gold settle even less on silver. What settles fineness is a bench or a hallmarking centre, not a stamp and not a kitchen test.
Our own practice, for what it is worth: we state the purity of the specific piece on the bill and weigh it in front of you. If you are unsure about something you already own, bring it to the counter and we will read the marks with you.
What fineness changes about the price
Silver is sold by weight, so fineness changes the price directly and arithmetically. No rate is needed to see the size of the effect — the ratio does the work.
Example: take two identical 100-gram pieces. The one marked 925 holds 92.5 g of silver. The one marked 800 holds 80 g. That is a difference of 12.5 g of metal on the same weight, before a single rupee of making charge is counted. On a 500-gram lamp, the same gap becomes 62.5 g.
This is why the fineness question gets serious as the piece gets heavier. On a light metti — a toe ring — the metal is a small share of the bill and the workmanship is most of it. On a pair of tall lamps, the metal is nearly all of it.
Silver is per gram in Vellore today (). You can see today's silver rate in Vellore and what it works out to across common weights, and the range of pieces we keep on the silver jewellery and pooja articles page. Rates are indicative and confirmed at the time of billing at the showroom.
Questions we are asked
Is 925 silver real silver?
Yes. 925 is sterling silver — 92.5% silver, with the remaining 7.5% usually copper. It is the fineness used for most silver jewellery sold anywhere in the world, and it is one of the seven grades BIS recognises in India.
Is German silver real silver?
No. German silver — also sold as nickel silver, alpaca or argentan — is an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc, and it contains no silver at all. The name describes the colour, not the content. Do not confuse it with the fineness 835, a genuine Continental standard that does mean 83.5% real silver.
What is the difference between 925 and S925?
Nothing in the metal. The S stands for sterling, so 925 and S925 both claim 92.5% silver. S925 is simply the form used more often on imported and factory-made jewellery. Neither stamp is by itself a test of the metal underneath.
Is silver hallmarking compulsory in India?
No. Silver hallmarking is voluntary. HUID-based silver hallmarking was introduced on a voluntary basis from 1 September 2025 under the revised standard IS 2112:2025, and BIS has said it is still assessing what a mandatory silver regime would require. Gold hallmarking is mandatory in the notified districts of India. Silver is not.
Send us the mark and we will read it
Photograph the stamp on your piece as clearly as your phone will manage and send it to us. We will tell you what it says, and what it does not.