Is This Silver? At Home Tests for How to Tell

Sometimes curiosity gets the best of you, sidetracking you to follow an irrational thought to a rewarding path, you hope, and this was certainly the case last Friday.  A friend of mine came to me inquiring about a slim silver-tone bracelet that was given to her.  She wanted to know if this lovely present was actually made of silver or not.  And I realized that I didn't have an easy answer for her.  Determined to remedy this, the two of us set on a quest for practical tests to find out if something is truly silver. 

Test #1 --- Acid

This test called for Nitric Acid, which, as I'm sure you could guess, we did not have on hand.  Just to give it a shot we tried this test, substituting lemon juice instead of the Nitric Acid.  The results were supposed to be that for 100-90% silver a drop of acid will turn milky in color when it comes in contact with silver. This proved very disappointing. Our results were nearly indistinguishable from a regular drop of water on silver.  (Test found here)

Test #2 -- Magnets

The next test seemed more promising and ---we hoped--- more conclusive.  Only iron-based metals, known as ferrous metals, are magnetic.  Therefore, any solid silver item should not react when coming in contact with a magnet.  Doing this test, we did get the hoped for result, getting no magnetic reaction. The problem was, however, that there is something profoundly unsatisfying about a test that results in no response. And, even if the object was made of copper and plated with silver the outcome of this test would have been the same.

So we were left feeling unconvinced and continued searching for a test which clearly communicated a positive reaction.

Test #3 --- Silver rings like a bell

This test sounded promising, but after attempting to "ring" the silver bangle with a pen, the graphite tip of a pencil (no really--- we were instructed to try this!), and a wooden take-out chopstick and getting nothing more compelling than a single note "thud", we moved swiftly onto the next test.

Test #4 --- The excellent conductivity of Silver

It figures, of course that the most satisfying of our tests was the last one we tried, utilizing the high conductivity inherent to silver.  This test uses simply an ice cube to test the metal's reaction and was so clear and conclusive that the difference from the others was like that of night and day.  The object should become notably cold to the touch: 5-10 seconds for solid silver versus around 30 seconds for a plated object.  So we went ahead with the ice cube, resting the bottom edge of the bracelet on top of a 2 inch ice cube.  Within seconds of the ice cube coming into contact with the skinny band of metal you could feel cold creep up the object and travel all the way to the portion of metal held by our fingers!  Success! 

This test was shared by James Chunn of Thedore, Alabama, and can be found HERE!

If you have a test for identifying silver we would love to hear about it!  Please leave your test of choice as a comment below.   

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Comments

[Wholesale jewelry]

I think these tips are utterly useful. This kind of checks are really useful because today many dealers fool many of their customers. Thanks the share.

elf925.com

[Kitco Silver Charts]

If you have found something that you believe to be silver, you can also check to see how it has oxidized. Silver, unlike gold but like many other metals, corrodes when it has come in contact with an oxidizer (such as the humidity in air). Silver does not rust, but it tarnishes (produces a fine black powdery surfactant) when it corrodes. So if you have enough time, you can use that as another test to see whether your metal contains any silver.

[Mandar N]

Excellent suggestion !! ! Pretty helpful....

[Emma]

What if the jewelery is in sections, like a chain, rather then a bangle? Should the ice cube test still have the same result, or will the conductivity be affected the "gaps" inbetween the links?

[james blackstone]

Loved the article, but the only real way to test is with nitric acid. You can buy a cheap acid test kit and you need to add a file to your kit so you can get deep...past any potential heavy coating. I've tested pieces that did not yield a "milky white" puddle of liquid. Actually yielded a brownish cream color of liquid which still had high enough silver content to be worth buying.

I paid 15.00 for an unmarked silver colored vase that tested 40% in silver content. I forget the weight but the scrap silver netted about 100.00 back in the day when silver was around five dollars an ounce.

It takes practice to get good at testing, never would I use anything but a fresh batch of nitric acid to get accurate results!

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[Andreas]

beautiful work...

[Kim]

I am curious do these tests also work on silverware? I have some older antique looking silverware that is supposed to be silver, but I am not sure if it is or if I was taken advantage of when I bought the silverware.

If you can please let me know I would greatly appreciate it!

Kim

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