Meaning of hallmarking

Today, I will talk about the significance of markings.

That is, why marking has such importance.

As it is commonly known, gold and silver belong to the group of precious metals, and therefore - expensive. Strangely enough, throughout human history, there have been frequent attempts to deceive in the trade of expensive goods. To prevent this, honest producers and sellers decided to mark their products with special symbols indicating their appropriate purity.

For this purpose, in the Polish lands, the elder of the guild appointed an assayer who, after checking the conformity of a given product, stamped it with a special mark - the so-called hallmark.

And here's an interesting fact - the oldest recorded hallmark dates back to 1455 from the Gdańsk goldsmiths' guild.

Currently, the body responsible for examining and marking precious metal products is the Main Assay Office in Warsaw (with several regional branches, including one in Gdańsk).

If you are buying an item made of, for example, silver, weighing more than 5 grams, it should bear the marks of the assay office.

But besides them, the product must also have two other marks:

- maker's mark (a specially created graphical sign for the specific goldsmith)

- silver fineness.

In the case of Balteria, the maker's mark is two letters, DM, which come from my first and last name.

Silver fineness is usually marked with '925, which means that 92.5% is pure silver, and the rest is another metal (usually copper).

Personally, I always aim to exceed this value (the latest assay office test indicated ~'935) so that the customer receives the highest quality product.