Hallmarking might feel like the last stage in a project; the final stamp of approval, quite literally, before a piece is ready to leave the workshop.
But hallmarking is far from an afterthought. While hallmarking is a legal requirement for most precious metal jewellery, it’s also an opportunity to add value and meaning.
For jewellers and retailers, hallmarking is a vital part of selling precious metal jewellery legally and professionally. It is also a useful way to talk about quality and provenance with your customers, particularly in a market where metal descriptions aren’t always transparent.
What is assay, and what is hallmarking?
Precious metals are rarely used in their pure forms, with most jewellery being produced from some kind of alloy. Examples include 18ct gold, which is 75% pure gold and 25% additional metal, and sterling silver, which is 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% additional metal.
The alloy a piece is made from affects price and qualities including durability, colour and hypoallergenicity. A customer often chooses their alloy carefully, and wants to be absolutely certain they’re getting what they were promised.
This is where assay and hallmarking come in. Assay is the process of testing a precious metal to determine or confirm its type and purity. This process takes place in an assay office, of which there are four in the UK.
Entirely independent, assay offices conduct testing to legally defined standards. We use the Birmingham Assay Office for all our testing, who use X-ray Fluorescence, or XRF, to scan and measure the precise metal content.
When testing has taken place, a permanent mark is applied to the piece through stamp or laser, confirming the results and adding extra information such as when and where the piece was tested. This is a hallmark.
When does jewellery need to be hallmarked in the UK?
In the UK, hallmarking is a legal requirement for precious metal items over certain weight thresholds. If you are describing a piece as gold, silver, platinum or palladium and it is over the legal minimum weight for that metal, it must be hallmarked before sale.
The current thresholds for compulsory hallmarking are:
- Gold: 1g+
- silver: 7.78g+
- platinum: 0.5g+
- palladium: 1g+
A full UK hallmark has three compulsory parts: a sponsor mark, a fineness mark and an assay office mark.
The sponsor’s mark identifies the person or business responsible for submitting the piece for testing. If we arrange hallmarking for you, we can use your own individual mark or use our own. You can register a sponsor’s mark directly with your chosen Assay Office, for a cost.
The fineness mark shows the purity of the metal as a number out of 1000, such as 925 for sterling silver, 375 for 9ct gold, 585 for 14ct gold or 750 for 18ct gold.
The Assay Office mark shows which UK Assay Office tested and marked the item. Each office has their own symbol: an anchor for Birmingham, a leopard’s head for London, a rose for Sheffield and a castle for Edinburgh.
A hallmark can include optional marks such as date letters and commemorative marks. These can be a great way to add value, especially to significant or bespoke pieces.
These hallmarking requirements apply however you sell your jewellery, whether in person, in a store or online. Wherever you sell, you’re required to clearly display a Dealer’s Notice, an official sign which explains hallmarking to the end consumer.
Why hallmarking matters
If your jewellery hits the requirements for hallmarking, you simply can’t sell without it.
But beyond legality, hallmarking is a really useful tool to draw on when speaking with customers. A hallmark proves that a piece of jewellery has been independently tested and gives your customer reassurance that they are buying exactly what you have promised.
A customer may be purchasing fine jewellery for the first time, and won’t necessarily understand the difference between different alloys and options. Assay gives you a clear, factual way to explain the differences, for instance between gold vermeil, gold plated and different carat solid golds.
It can help explain why one piece costs more than another, especially when precious metal prices are high and customers are paying closer attention to value. Jewellery descriptions aren’t always transparent, but hallmarking gives us all an unequivocal, shared standard to work from.
Hallmarking can also add context and meaning to a piece of jewellery. Customers often appreciate details that connect jewellery to a particular time, place or event, and hallmarking helps provide this.
From our castings to bespoke jewellery, every JewelCast piece is created in the UK. So a UK hallmark is a beautiful finishing touch, speaking to customers’ growing interest in quality and provenance.
How we make hallmarking easy
For busy jewellers and designers, assay can feel like one more piece of admin. Our aim is to make hallmarking as straightforward as possible.
We can provide hallmarking as part of our casting process. Simply request this service at the point of order, including any notes on placement and optional marks, which we’ll try to accommodate wherever possible.
There are just a couple of things to note. Hallmarking can be arranged for completed castings only; if a piece needs assembly or mounting after casting, we can’t hallmark the component parts. Hallmarking adds 48 hours to your order time.
If you have your own sponsor mark registered with Birmingham Assay Office, we can use your mark once the correct permission is in place. If you don’t have your own sponsor mark registered with Birmingham Assay Office we can use our JC mark.
Hallmarking protects both your business and the end consumer, and helps all of us maintain trust and quality across our industry. Working directly with the Birmingham Assay Office to hallmark your pieces, we’ll help tick this vital step off your to-do list.