![]() The London office, with its iconic leopard’s head punch, used to change years in May. The Birmingham Office, for example, which opened on 31 August 1773, traditionally changed letter in July each year. Confusingly, hallmark years have changed at dates such as the month of a monarch's crowning or assay officers' terms of service. The hallmark years have also not always been calendar-years (January to December). The system of letters has changed over time and there have even been local variations between the various assay offices. The alphabetic sequences are also differentiated by changes in typeface, punch shape, and changes from upper to lower case characters. Therefore, each period of alphabetic sequences consists of 25 letters - not 26. In order to avoid any confusion, at various times either one of the letters To save space in the tiny British hallmarks, the year is indicted by a letter of the alphabet. Unsurprisingly then, as seen below there are hundreds of different date letter marks to decipher. Each assay office could use their own date letter hallmarks, with each year being different. There was also an office in Dublin - formerly part of the UK system - that is now an independent Irish Republic office. In addition to these current locations, there were also previously offices in: Today there are four UK assay offices: Birmingham, Edinburgh, London and Sheffield. As mentioned above however, silver hallmark date letters are no longer required, so modern jewellery etc will most likely not feature one. Hallmarking must be administered by recognised assay offices. The UK Hallmarking Act (1973) requires all silver items over 7.78 grams to be hallmarked. Despite this, the year punch is still often included for tradition's sake. This left just the fineness, assay office, and maker as standard marks. ![]() ![]() The 1973 Act removed the date from being a compulsory mark. Traditionally common control marks consisted of four punches. In 1757, counterfeiting hallmarks was made a felony, punishable by death. ![]() Provide impartial proof of an article's precious metal content.īritish hallmarks date back to medieval times. They are therefore mixed or alloyed with other harder metals. Pure precious metals, such as silver and gold, are generally too soft and malleable for practical use. While not needed as part of the valuation process for scrap silver, the date letter hallmark can be nice when trying to build a picture of the history of your item. If you own old silver jewellery or antiques, then silver hallmark date letters offer the best way to work out when your item was assayed, and a rough guide to when it was made. ![]()
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