How to Recover Unreadable Hallmarks from Antique Sterling Silver

The hallmarks on antique sterling silver are often nearly impossible to decipher. Decades or centuries of polishing, besides the fact that they are often very small to begin with, can make them almost illegible. There is a simple trick that professional appraisers and dealers use to unlock the secrets of hallmarks on antique sterling silver. Here’s how to do it.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Candle
• Matches or lighter
• Plain White Paper
• Clear Tape

1. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Locate the hallmarks on the antique sterling silver item in question. You will need a magnifying glass for this. English sterling silver has hallmarks on every removable piece. For instance, a teapot with a lid will have hallmarks on the lid, as well as on the body of the teapot, either near the rim or on the bottom. American sterling silver, as well as most other foreign sterling silver is usually marked on the bottom of holloware and undersides of flatware. French sterling marks are extremely tiny and are usually hidden somewhere in the designs.

2. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Remove a couple of pieces of the clear scotch tape and have them ready on the edge of your work surface or table. Just partially stick it to the edge so that a tab pokes out that you can grab easily. I like to have a few pieces handy, in case I have to do it more than once.

3. Place a clean piece of white paper on the table, ready to use.

4. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Light the candle with a match or lighter.

5. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Hold the antique sterling silver item just above the flame of the candle. Pass the flame directly on the area where the hallmarks are. Soot will collect on the silver and the area will soon be blackened. Make sure that the soot blackens the hallmark area completely.

6. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Remove the candle from the silver, when the hallmark area is obscured. Set it aside to cool for a few minutes…being careful not to smudge the blackened area. It is important that the silver cools completely, or else the tape glue will melt on contact and make a mess of your hard work.

7. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Place a piece of tape over the blackened area on the antique sterling silver, when cool, and press down on it slightly. Make sure you don’t move it around. Just gentle downward pressure will do.

8. 
   Antique Sterling Silver

   Remove the tape and stick it to the piece of white paper you have waiting on the table.

9. Put the paper in a scanner and upload the image to your image software on your computer. You can also just take a close up picture of it with a camera, if you have one that can do macro shots and upload to your computer.

10. 
    Antique Sterling Silver

    Crop the image and re-size it so that it is large enough to read the symbols. Save it on your computer for future reference, and print it out if needed.

11. Look up the symbols in a Hallmark guide for Antique Sterling Silver. There are many online reference guides, and a lot of great books on the subject. This one turns out to be a piece of Victorian sterling silver from London England. I could not read that mark without doing this process.

12. Clean the soot off of your antique sterling silver. Just rub a little silver polish on it and it will clean right up.

Tips & Warnings

• Another method on enlarging the image, is to do it on a copier.