By Rocco Clayfield, founder of GoldPaid (GOLDPAID LTD) · Published · updated
Trying to date a piece? Send us a photo of the marks
Photograph the row of marks close up, then the whole piece, and send both on WhatsApp. We will reply with what the marks say and roughly what we would pay. No obligation, and nothing needs posting.
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Not sure what the mark says? Use the hallmark lookup. Final offers depend on inspection, item weight, purity, hallmarks, stones, non-gold components, condition and the live precious-metal market.
What is a date letter on a hallmark?
A British hallmark is a row of small punches struck by an independent assay office. Three of those punches are compulsory: the sponsor mark (the maker or the firm that submitted the piece), the standard mark (the three-digit fineness, such as 375, 750 or 925), and the assay office mark (the town symbol). The date letter is a fourth, optional punch, and it is the only one that carries a year.
It is a single letter of the alphabet sitting inside a shaped shield. The letter identifies the year within a cycle. The shield shape and the typeface identify which cycle. You need both halves. A letter on its own is not a date, it is a clue.
Date letters have been voluntary since 1999. Assay Office London still applies one as standard unless a customer asks otherwise, so most modern London-marked jewellery is datable. Elsewhere the mark may simply be absent, and its absence tells you nothing bad about the piece. If you want the whole mark set explained rather than just the year, our complete guide to UK gold hallmarks takes each punch in turn.
Why the letter on its own can never date a piece
London has been using date letters since 1478. Over that span the letter A has come round more than twenty times. So has the letter B, and so has every other letter in use. If a letter alone were enough, the system would have collapsed centuries ago.
What stops the collapse is that every cycle is deliberately made to look different from the last. The offices change three things at once when a cycle restarts.
- The case. A cycle of capitals is followed by a cycle of lower case, then capitals again.
- The typeface. Roman, italic, black letter (the dense Gothic script), sans-serif and serif have all been used at different times.
- The shield. The outline of the punch changes: square, shaped, cut-corner, oval, circular, and so on.
Sheffield Assay Office puts the purpose plainly: each set features a new typeface, case and shield shape so that each letter can only indicate one specific year. That is the whole design. A Gothic lower-case a in a cut-corner square and a serif capital A in a plain shield are different years, potentially a century or more apart, and the letter is identical in both.
What changed in 1975
Two things about dating British silver and gold became much easier in 1975, following the Hallmarking Act 1973.
First, the four offices stopped running separate cycles. Birmingham Assay Office states it directly: date letters were unique to each UK assay office until 1975, when they all began to use the same font and cycle. Sheffield Assay Office puts the same fact the other way round, noting that the same date letter has been used by all four UK assay offices, changing on 1 January each year, since 1975.
Second, the changeover moved to 1 January. Before 1975 the offices switched letters partway through the calendar year, Birmingham in July, which meant a single date letter spanned parts of two calendar years. A pre-1975 Birmingham letter therefore dates a piece to a hallmarking year such as July 1936 to June 1937, not to a single tidy year. From 1975 onwards the letter and the calendar year line up exactly.
| Before 1975 | From 1975 | |
|---|---|---|
| Letter used | Different at each office | Same at all four offices |
| Changeover | Mid-year, varying by office | 1 January |
| Year covered | Parts of two calendar years | One calendar year exactly |
| Town mark needed to date it? | Yes, always | No, the letter is enough |
| Compulsory? | Yes | Yes until 1999, voluntary since |
The practical consequence for anyone holding a piece: if the mark is from 1975 or later, one table answers the question. If it is older, you must identify the office first. There is no shortcut round that.
The 2000 to 2024 cycle, and how to read it
This is the cycle that covers almost every piece of modern British jewellery in circulation. It ran for 25 years in lower case. Three published facts fix it completely: the cycle is 25 letters long, Birmingham Assay Office records that the letter i was skipped in favour of j in 2008 and that l was used in 2010, and the same office marked the end of the run with the line "Goodbye z, and hello A" at the start of 2025. Working forward from a in 2000 with i removed, every year falls into place and lands on z in 2024. The arithmetic is shown here rather than asserted, because it is the only part of this article we have derived rather than read off an official chart. The same years, with 2025 and 2026, are kept together on the UK hallmark date letter chart.
The full year-by-year table, 2000 to 2026, is on the UK hallmark date letter chart, with the source for every row.
These letters are lower case. If you are holding a capital letter, you are in a different cycle and this table does not apply to it.
The current cycle: 2025 onwards
A new 25-year cycle began on 1 January 2025 with a serif capital A, announced by both Birmingham and Sheffield. 2026 is B, the second letter of the current run. The cycle will finish in 2049, and the letters dropped along the way will be decided by the offices as they go, on the same principle of avoiding look-alikes.
| Year | Date letter | Style |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | z | Lower case, end of the 2000 cycle |
| 2025 | A | Serif capital, first of the new cycle |
| 2026 | B | Serif capital, current year |
Because the case flipped from lower to upper in 2025, telling a 2020s piece from an earlier one is unusually easy at the moment. A lower-case letter is 2000 to 2024. A serif capital in a modern shield is 2025 or later.
Birmingham and London before 1975
This is where honesty matters more than a tidy table. Birmingham has been striking date letters since 1773 and London since 1478. Between them that is well over three hundred separate letter-and-shield combinations, and the differences that separate one cycle from the next are often a serif, a shield corner or a stroke weight. Reproducing those from memory or from secondary websites is how wrong dates get into circulation.
We are not publishing a pre-1975 letter table here, because we could not verify one to the standard the rest of this page is held to. What we can give you is the method, which is the part that does not change, and the official charts, which are the part that must be right.
The method has three steps, in this order.
- Identify the town mark first. A leopard’s head is London. An anchor is Birmingham. A crown (on silver, before 1975) or a rose (on gold from 1904, on every metal from 1975) is Sheffield. A three-towered castle is Edinburgh. Until you have this, no letter chart applies. Our guides to the London leopard’s head, the Birmingham anchor, the Sheffield rose and the Edinburgh castle cover each one.
- Narrow the era before you touch the letter. Broad markers do most of the work. A crowned leopard’s head is London from 1478 to the early 1820s; an uncrowned one is later. A gold standard written only as a three-digit number, such as 375 with no 9 beside it, points to 1975 or later. A duty mark showing a sovereign’s head sits between 1784 and 1890.
- Only then read the letter, together with its case, typeface and shield outline, against the published chart for that office. Match all four features, not just the letter.
Where to check a date letter officially
The assay offices themselves are the primary source, and for anything pre-1975 they are worth using rather than a search engine. Two of them will look at a photograph for you.
| Office | Town mark | What they offer |
|---|---|---|
| Birmingham Assay Office | Anchor | A searchable date letter archive covering every letter the office has applied since 1773, by year or by letter. There is a one-off charge for lifetime access, stated on their page. |
| Assay Office London | Leopard’s head | A trace-a-hallmark service. You email clear images and a description, and they cover both historic marks struck before 1975 and recent London marks. Pre-1914 research is by library appointment. |
| Sheffield Assay Office | Crown, then rose | Published guidance on UK hallmarks, including the shared post-1975 cycle, and a recommendation of Bradbury’s Book of Hallmarks as the standard printed reference. |
| Edinburgh Assay Office | Three-towered castle | Its own pre-1975 cycle, distinct from the three English offices. Contact the office directly for Scottish marks. |
Links to each of these are in the sources at the foot of this page. If you are thinking of selling a piece, send a photograph of the punches on WhatsApp first and we will tell you whether the date letter is worth chasing before you spend time on the archives.
A worked example: reading a mark from start to finish
Take a silver spoon with five punches on the back of the shank, read left to right: two initials in a shaped punch, a walking lion in profile, an anchor, a lower-case letter r in a plain shield, and nothing else.
- The initials are the sponsor mark, the maker or the firm that submitted the piece.
- The walking lion is the lion passant, the traditional British mark for sterling silver at 925 parts per thousand. Our guide to what 925 means on silver covers the standard itself.
- The anchor is Birmingham.
- The lower-case r is the date letter.
Now the order of reasoning. The letter is lower case and the shield is plain and modern in outline, which puts it in the 2000 cycle rather than any earlier one. Because the piece is post-1975, the office no longer matters for dating: the letter is shared. Reading r off the table above gives 2016. A modern spoon, not a Georgian one, whatever the pattern looks like.
Change one detail and the answer changes completely. If that same r sat in a cut-corner shield in dense black letter script, it would belong to a Victorian or earlier Birmingham cycle, and the anchor would become essential rather than incidental. That is the whole discipline in one example: the letter is the last thing you read, not the first.
Does the date letter change what a piece is worth?
For most items sold to a postal buyer, no. We buy on measured metal content: weight multiplied by tested purity, valued against the live market on the day. A 2016 chain and a 1936 chain of the same weight and the same carat hold the same gold, and the letter does not add to it.
The date letter matters for a different and more important reason. It is one of the clearest signals that a piece should be looked at as an object rather than as metal, and in those cases selling for scrap is the wrong move.
- Early eighteenth-century and Georgian silver. A complete, crisp mark set from that era can carry value well above metal content, particularly on flatware and hollowware by a recorded maker.
- Named makers with collector followings. A date letter that pins a piece to a maker’s active years can materially change how it should be sold. Auction or a specialist dealer will normally do better than any refiner.
- Anniversary and commemorative marks. Special punches struck alongside the date letter in particular years are collected in their own right.
- Complete sets and canteens. A matched set carrying one consistent date letter is worth more intact than broken up, and the letter is how you prove it is matched.
Where a piece is worth its metal and no more, the letter is a piece of interesting history that changes no part of the figure. The valuation runs on the assay, not on the age. How we value gold sets out the calculation in full, and XRF testing explained covers how purity is measured without acid or scratching.
How a parcel with an interesting hallmark is handled
- Photograph the full row of punches close up, and the whole piece, and send them on WhatsApp to 07944 014111. We will read what we can from the image and tell you honestly what a photograph cannot settle.
- If a mark suggests the piece is worth more as an antique than as metal, we say so at that point and point you elsewhere. There is no obligation either way.
- If you want to proceed, we send a prepaid Royal Mail Special Delivery label, usually within 30 minutes during working hours. Royal Mail cover may be available up to £2,500 depending on the postal method and cover level used.
- Every parcel is signed for on arrival and opened at our Bristol office, where each item is weighed and XRF-tested. The hallmark guides the sorting; the tested composition sets the offer. Nothing is firm before inspection.
- You receive a written, itemised offer showing the purity found, the weight and the figure. Accept and we aim to pay by Faster Payments within one working hour of acceptance. Decline and the whole parcel is returned to you free of charge by tracked post.
Final offers depend on inspection, item weight, purity, hallmarks, stones, non-gold components, condition and the live precious-metal market. GoldPaid works by post across the whole of the United Kingdom; we do not have a shop for you to visit. The full process is on the sell gold by post page.
Sources
- Birmingham Assay Office, date letter archive and the statement that date letters were unique to each office until 1975: theassayoffice.co.uk
- Birmingham Assay Office on the 2025 change, the 25-year cycle, the skipping of i in 2008 and the use of l in 2010: theassayoffice.co.uk/2025-date-letter
- Sheffield Assay Office, UK hallmarks guidance: the same date letter at all four offices changing on 1 January since 1975, the date letter voluntary from 1999, and a new typographic alphabet every 25 years: assayoffice.co.uk
- Sheffield Assay Office announcement of date letter A for 2025, and the principle that each set changes typeface, case and shield shape: assayoffice.co.uk/news
- Sheffield Assay Office history, on the crown used for silver, the rose used for gold from 1904 and the rose used on both from 1975: assayoffice.co.uk/about-us/history
- Assay Office London, trace a hallmark, on comparing the date letter to published tables of that office and on the mark being voluntary since 1999: assayofficelondon.co.uk
- Hallmarking Act 1973, the statute behind the 1975 reorganisation: legislation.gov.uk
Where the offices disagree we have said so rather than picking the neater answer. The omitted letter in the 2000 to 2024 cycle is the clearest case: Birmingham’s account and the 25-year arithmetic point to i alone being dropped, while Sheffield’s wording refers to i and j. No pre-1975 letter table is published here because we could not verify one from a primary source.