800 (continental silver)

How to read it

800 is a fineness figure in parts per thousand. Meyers Konversations-Lexikon put the reckoning plainly in 1887: an alloy four-fifths gold or silver and one-fifth another metal is 0.800 fine. In Britain the figures 800 are one of the four silver standards the Hallmarking Act 1973 lists for a hallmark, beside 925, 958 and 999, and Ag 800 is one of the five standards the International Hallmarking Convention treats as legal in every member state. Howard Pitcher Okie, writing in 1928, gave .800 as the standard of the German Empire in modern times; the 1887 lexicon also lists 0.800 among the legal silver standards of France and Italy.

Also searched as: 800 mark, 800 on silver, .800 silver, 800 silver, continental silver.

800 or 925?

800 has 125 fewer parts of silver in every 1,000 than sterling silver, and it is lower again than coin silver at 900. The word sterling does not belong on it: the FTC’s jewelry guides keep the words sterling, sterling silver and solid silver for metal of at least 925/1,000ths pure silver.

800 silver in the United States

The FTC’s guides call the plain word silver misleading unless a figure for the pure silver content in parts per thousand comes immediately before it, giving 750 silver as their example. So 800 silver, figure first, fits the guides. Until 2018 the guides also advised against calling anything under 925 silver; the FTC dropped that threshold in 2018 as not necessary to prevent deception. Under the National Gold and Silver Stamping Act, silver marked with a figure (anything other than the words sterling or coin) may fall short of the figure by no more than four parts per thousand.

800 in a British hallmark

The figures 800 are struck in the silver shield like any other British standard mark. 800 became the lowest silver standard the Act allows on 1 January 1999, when the Hallmarking (Hallmarking Act Amendment) Regulations 1998 replaced 925 with 800 as the minimum fineness.

German 800 with a crescent and crown

Germany’s law on the fineness of gold and silver wares, dated 16 July 1884, came into force on 1 January 1888. It allows a fineness to be stamped on silver tableware and utensils (Geräte) only at 800 or above, and the actual metal may fall no more than eight parts per thousand short of the stamp. The 1887 lexicon describes the stamp the law called for: the imperial crown, a crescent moon for silver (a sun for gold), the fineness in thousandths and the firm’s name or registered mark, with the crown to the right of the crescent. Jewelry (Schmucksachen) was treated differently. It may be stamped at any fineness, in thousandths, but the law, still in force, bars the crown-and-crescent stamp from jewelry, so the crescent and crown belong on spoons and hollowware, while a German ring or brooch carries the figure alone.

Older German figures

Okie notes that German silver marked 12, 13 or 14 gives the silver in sixteenths, 12 being .750 fine and 13 .8125, and that German goods made for export were made to higher standards and marked accordingly, 925 Sterling among them.