Silver plate vs sterling silver: how a charity shop tells the difference.

What silver plate actually is

Silver plate is a thin coat of silver electroplated onto a base metal. The base metal underneath is normally copper, nickel-brass, or a copper-zinc alloy. The plating itself is real silver, but it is thin: typically 10 to 30 microns, about a third the thickness of a human hair. A full-size plated teapot carries only a few grams of silver in total, spread too thinly across the surface to refine at a profit once it is on the base. A polished plated piece looks the same as a polished sterling piece on the shop floor, and that is exactly the point: plate was designed in the nineteenth century to give a silver appearance at a fraction of the price.

Sterling silver is 925 parts silver per thousand, with the remaining 75 parts copper or another alloying metal for strength. Sterling is solid metal all the way through. A sterling teapot is sterling on the outside, sterling in the middle, and sterling on the inside. A plated teapot is silver-thin on the outside and copper or nickel-brass everywhere else.

EPNS, A1, and the other plate markings

British silver plate is normally marked, but the marks are different from the marks on sterling. The most common plate marks are:

• EPNS: Electroplated Nickel Silver. The most common British plate mark from the late nineteenth century onwards. Nickel-silver base (copper, nickel, zinc alloy), silver plating on top.
• EP: Electroplated. A shortened version, usually with the maker name alongside.
• A1: A quality mark used by many British plate manufacturers to indicate a heavier or better-quality plating layer. A1 is not sterling; it is "first-quality plate".
• A1 Plate: same as above, with the word "Plate" spelled out for clarity.
• EPBM: Electroplated Britannia Metal. Britannia metal is a tin-antimony-copper base alloy, used as the substrate for plating on cheaper Victorian pieces.
• "Silver Plated" or "Silver Plate" spelled out in full: an unambiguous mark used by some twentieth-century makers.
• Sheffield Plate: an earlier (pre-electroplating) technique where a sheet of silver was fused to a copper base by heat and rolled out together. Sheffield Plate is plate, not sterling, although well-made eighteenth-century Sheffield Plate has collector value in its own right. The tells are a faint pink "bleed" of copper showing through on worn high points and a visible lapped seam at rims and edges where the silver sheet was folded over the copper.

Any of these marks on the underside of a piece confirms plate. The shop manager can stop the assessment there and price the piece as silverware on the shop floor, not as scrap-grade silver.

What sterling silver looks like instead

A British sterling hallmark has four marks in a row: the lion passant (a walking lion, the standard mark for sterling silver), a town mark (a leopard’s head for London, an anchor for Birmingham, a crown or rose for Sheffield, a castle for Edinburgh (older Edinburgh pieces also carry a thistle as the sterling standard mark in place of the lion passant), and a crowned harp on Irish silver assayed in Dublin), a date letter (a single letter in a shaped shield, indicating the assay year), and a maker’s mark (the maker’s initials).

On a piece marked before 1999 all four should be present for a complete British hallmark. Since 1999 the compulsory marks are the maker’s mark, the number 925 in an oval and the town mark, and the lion and the date letter are optional. A single lion stamp on its own is not enough; counterfeit lion stamps exist. A complete crisp row of marks under a 10x loupe is the gold standard for sterling identification on the donation table. The date letter earns its place in the row. Each assay office cycled through the alphabet in a fixed sequence of letter styles and shield shapes, so the letter pins the piece to a specific assay year against published tables. A shop does not need the tables on hand: photograph the mark row and the year can be read at the bench, and an early date on a heavy piece is one of the things that moves a valuation from the scrap route to the antique route.

Foreign sterling is marked differently. Continental European silver carries a numerical fineness (800, 830, 925, 950) and a maker mark; American silver carries the word "Sterling" or a fineness mark; Russian silver carries an 84 (zolotnik mark for 875 fineness) or higher. These are not British hallmarks but they are valid silver marks, and they are post-able.

Base metals under the plate, and where they show through

The base metal under silver plate is normally copper, nickel-brass, or Britannia metal. When the plating wears through, the base metal becomes visible. The places this happens are predictable: any high-friction point on the piece.

• Handle joints on a teapot, where the handle is bolted or soldered to the body. The friction of years of pouring rubs through the plating around the joint, exposing the copper or nickel-brass underneath.
• Foot rims on a candlestick or sugar bowl, where the base sits on the table and rocks slightly with use. A worn foot rim often shows a coppery ring around the bottom of the piece.
• Lip edges on a milk jug or coffee pot, where the metal has been chamfered thin and the plate cannot adhere as well. The lip can wear to a darker, coppery edge.
• Highlights on engraving where the engraver’s tool cut through the plate. Cut engraving on plate sometimes shows a thin coppery line in the cut.
• Inside the bowl of a teapot or coffee pot, where the tannins have worked at the plating from inside. A black or pink interior on a polished outside is a classic plate giveaway.

Sterling does not show this. Sterling wears smoothly and stays the same colour throughout. If you can see a different colour metal at any wear point, the piece is plate.

Why a polished tea set can be either

The most useful piece of advice on the donation table is this: do not judge silverware by how polished it is. A regularly polished plate tea set, the kind a careful household maintained for decades, can look mirror-bright and have no visible wear-through. A neglected sterling tea set, kept in a sideboard for forty years, can be tarnished black and look like a much less attractive piece. The polish tells you about the household, not about the metal.

Always turn the piece over. The hallmark or plate mark is on the underside of the foot or the base of the handle, not on the polished outer surface. Turning over is the single most useful action a charity shop volunteer can take on a piece of silverware.

For a tea service, mark consistency matters. Sterling tea services normally have all pieces marked by the same maker, on the same date, with the same hallmark sequence. A plate tea service may have only some pieces marked (often the larger pieces) and the marks may be inconsistent between pieces. A mixed-mark service is usually plate.

The magnet test, and why it is not definitive

A neodymium magnet costs a few pounds and is a useful first-pass filter on silverware. Hold the magnet against the underside of the piece. If the piece is strongly attracted, it has a steel or iron core and is not sterling. Real sterling silver and real silver plate (over nickel-brass or copper bases) are both non-magnetic.

The magnet test catches one type of fake: silver-painted steel decorative pieces, occasionally sold as souvenirs or party items. It does not distinguish plate from sterling, because both plate and sterling are non-magnetic. The hallmark, not the magnet, is the deciding test for plate-versus-sterling.

A small number of older British pieces have steel inserts (a knife blade, a weighted base). The magnet will attract these even on a real sterling piece. Turn the piece over and check the marks.

Why hallmark presence on the base normally settles it, but not always

The single most reliable test on the donation table is the hallmark. A crisp row of four British hallmarks on the underside of a piece confirms sterling. A clearly stamped EPNS, A1, or "Silver Plated" mark on the underside confirms plate. In the great majority of donations, the marks settle the question in under a minute.

There are edge cases. A piece may be unmarked because it is foreign silver from a country that did not require marking. A piece may have its marks worn off after a century of polishing. A piece may be a composite, with a sterling body and a plated handle, where only the body is marked. A piece may have been re-soled with a plate base under a sterling top, which happens occasionally with repaired antique pots.

For these edge cases, XRF narrows the answer in seconds. The reading shows the silver content at the surface, and readings taken at worn edges, rims and the underside are compared to show whether the piece is solid sterling, a sterling-plus-base composite, or plate. Where a plating is thick and unworn, the report says the item cannot be confirmed as solid and names the assay route that would settle it. The reading is non-destructive. Indicative figures move with the market; the firm offer is set only after XRF assay confirms purity and weight of the specific items sent. XRF testing explained covers the method in more detail.

When to send a photo before posting

For a single hallmarked piece the shop has identified as sterling, the photo step is optional but useful. The team can give an indicative weight-based figure before the parcel is posted.

For a piece with unclear marks (worn, partial, foreign, or simply hard to read on a busy donation table), the photo step is the right action. Send a photo on WhatsApp to 07944 014111 showing the underside of the piece with the marks visible and the piece in full from above. The team will read the marks under their own loupe and respond with a rough estimate or with a clear "do not post. This is plate" answer.

For a large piece of silverware (a centrepiece, a soup tureen, a candelabra) the photo step is also useful for sizing the parcel. Your parcel travels on Royal Mail Special Delivery, and Royal Mail cover may be available up to £2,500 depending on the postal method and cover level used, and if a parcel may be worth more than that we split it across more than one prepaid label at no charge, each with its own tracking number and cover. A heavy sterling centrepiece can be worth more than £2,500 on its own, and one item cannot be split across labels, so mention it on WhatsApp and GoldPaid will confirm the appropriate postal option before the label is issued.

The decline path

If a piece is posted and the offer does not suit, the piece is returned to the shop tracked and signed for at GoldPaid’s cost. Free tracked return of any item the charity chooses not to sell. There is no fee for a returned parcel and no restocking charge.

If the offer is accepted, payment is by Faster Payment direct to the charity’s registered bank account, on a working day. A written itemised valuation with the XRF reading, the rate applied and the weight of each piece is emailed to the head-office contact, along with a trustee-friendly PDF summary.

Common questions