Hallmarking

Why Hallmark?

Precious metals used in jewellery and giftware manufacture are always used as an alloy. The precious metal must be mixed with other elements to give it the necessary properties such as flexibility to produce a desirable and durable article.

Even the most experienced jeweller or chemist cannot tell how much precious metal there is in an alloy just by looking at it, or whether a thick plating of gold is covering a base metal interior. Due to the high price of precious metals, this offers a huge opportunity for fraud and there has therefore always been a need to protect the public and honest suppliers, from those who are tempted to cheat them.

What is a hallmark?

In the UK a Hallmark consists of three COMPULSORY MARKS which give you the following information:

who made the article
what is its guaranteed standard of fineness
the Assay Office at which the article was tested and marked

For example:


AB Sponsor or maker	750 Standard	Anchor Assay Office

Sponsor's Mark (formerly known as the Maker's mark)

This shows the person or company responsible for sending the article to the Assay Office. The sponsor may be the manufacturer, retailer, importer, etc.

Assay Office Mark

There are now 4 British Assay Offices

Brimingham

Edinburgh

London

Sheffield

The separate Assay Office marks for imported goods were discontinued in 1999.

Standard Marks

These show the standard of fineness - the purity of the precious metal, in parts per thousand.

e.g.

The background shape shows the metal (gold).
The figure shows the article consists of 750 parts of gold by weight to 250 parts of other metals - 75% gold. This is equal to 18 carats (18 parts in every 24), the traditional way of describing gold purity.

Current Gold Standards