What the Marks on Your Silver Actually Mean
A hallmark is supposed to settle the question. In practice the marks on old silver do something more awkward: several of them contain the word silver while describing an object with no silver in it whatsoever. EPNS, EPBM, German silver, nickel silver. All of those read as silver at a glance and are worth their weight in copper and zinc.
So here is the short reference. Which marks are real fineness, which are silver in name only, and what to do when a piece carries nothing useful at all.
The marks that are real silver
925, or sterling. 92.5% silver, the standard for tableware and jewellery across most of the English-speaking world. A sterling tea service is genuinely silver, and its silver content is its weight times 0.925.
900, or "coin silver". 90% silver. Older American flatware often carries it, and the name comes from the era when silversmiths worked from melted coinage.
958, or Britannia. 95.8% silver, a British standard that predates sterling's dominance and still turns up. Worth knowing, because the word Britannia also appears in a mark that means the opposite. That one is below.
999 or 9999, "fine silver". Bullion purity. This is what a modern round or bar carries, and it is the only one on this list you are likely to meet on something bought as an investment rather than as an object.
Anything in that group is silver and can be valued from its weight. The rest of this piece is about everything else.
The marks that say silver and contain none
This is the part that costs people money.
EPNS. Electro-Plated Nickel Silver. A thin coat of silver over nickel silver, which is itself copper, nickel and zinc with no silver in it. The plating is measured in microns and is not recoverable in any way that pays.
EPBM. Electro-Plated Britannia Metal. The same idea over Britannia metal, a pewter-like tin alloy that is not the Britannia standard above. Two different Britannias, one silver and one not, which is a genuinely unfair thing for the trade to have done.
German silver, nickel silver, alpacca, alpaka, paktong, maillechort. Different names in different markets for the same copper-nickel-zinc alloy. No silver in any of them. Those names are old marketing, not composition.
Silver plate, triple plate, quadruple plate. A coating. "Quadruple" describes how many passes went on, not how much silver you own.
The thread through all of them is the same. The word silver in a mark can describe a colour or a tradition rather than a metal content. A 1,200 gram sterling tray and a 1,200 gram EPNS tray look nearly identical and weigh the same. One holds about 36 troy ounces of silver. The other holds none.
Why weight will not save you
Weighing a plated piece tells you almost nothing, because the plating is a rounding error against the base metal underneath. A heavy object is not more likely to be silver, and on plated tableware it is often less likely, because the weight comes from a thick base chosen precisely so the piece would feel substantial in the hand.
Which is also why "it feels heavy" and "it has tarnished" are not evidence. Nickel silver tarnishes. Plate tarnishes too, then wears through at the edges and corners first, and that is the one honest tell: look at the high points on a handle or a rim for a colour change to yellow or grey underneath.
"Secondary market" is not a mark
Worth clearing up, because it turns up in listings alongside real marks. Secondary market silver just means bullion that has been owned before rather than bought new from a mint or refiner. It says nothing about purity. It is a market term, and it usually signals a lower premium, which is a good thing for a buyer rather than a warning.
What to do with an unmarked piece
Plenty of genuine silver carries no mark at all, particularly older continental and colonial work, and plenty of plate carries a mark designed to look like a hallmark. So an absent mark proves nothing in either direction, and a convincing one does not settle it either.
If it matters, the answer is a test rather than a guess. A jeweller or a coin shop will test a piece in about a minute, usually for nothing, and an XRF reading settles it outright. We are upfront that this app cannot verify a piece. Nobody here has handled your metal, and no photograph settles composition.
What the app will not do is guess. Hand Quick Check a lot described as EPNS, EPBM or plate and it returns no metal at all rather than a melt value, because a number invented from a mark that means the opposite is worse than no number. That is the same rule that keeps a lot from looking like a bargain when it isn't.
The short version
925, 900, 958, 999 and sterling are silver, and their weight is worth something. EPNS, EPBM, German silver, nickel silver, alpacca and anything sold as plate are not silver, whatever the word in the name suggests. Britannia appears in both lists and means opposite things in each. Weight will not tell you which you are holding, wear at the edges and corners sometimes will, and a test always will.