In this tutorial, the presenter explains how to differentiate genuine sterling silver from silver‑plated items by reading maker marks and terminology. He demonstrates several common hallmarks—such as “coin silver extra plate,” “community plate,” “Holmes and Edwards IS (International Silver),” “stainless,” and “Rogers‑Bro Reinforced Plate IS”—showing that even when the word “plate” is omitted, these marks indicate silver plating rather than sterling. The video warns that historical sales often labeled items simply as “silver,” leading owners to assume they own sterling when they actually have plated pieces, which can drastically reduce resale value decades later. The presenter urges viewers to subscribe for more content.
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Are these items silver or silver plate? It's very difficult to tell because many times they won't actually say the word plated, or they won't say silver plated. So sometimes it's difficult to tell. However, today I'm going to help you with that so that you can understand some of the marks. Do you have any idea which one of these is silver and which ones are silver plate? They are all silver plate. So here, just to show you, this one here, it says coin silver extra plate. So it is coin silver, which means it's 90%, but when it says extra plate, that's an easy one. It'll tell you plate. This one here, it says community plate. Oftentimes you'll just see the word community, and that's also plated. This one here says Holmes and Edwards IS, which stands for International Silver. This is absolutely silver plate, even though it doesn't say plate. This is silver plate. This one over here doesn't say plate, but it does say stainless. So this is kind of an easy one. And this one over here says Rogers-Bro Reinforced Plate IS. Now again, Rogers-Bro sometimes is all you're going to see on some of your pieces, but that is usually silver plate. So that's the way it goes. Back in the day when you were buying these items, they would just tell you, okay, they're silver. So some people were under the false interpretation that that means it's sterling. Not necessarily. It could be silver plate, and most of the time they won't tell you the good or the bad. So then you buy the item, and then 50 years later when you go to sell it, you find out that they're actually plated and in most cases worth nothing. Please subscribe so you don't miss any future videos.
