Silver plate: EPNS, A1, EPBM and Sheffield plate, and what each is worth

01

What the letters on the back of a spoon mean

Plated wares are marked with letters, not hallmarks, because only precious metal can be hallmarked. Under the Hallmarking Act 1973 it is an offence, in the course of trade or business, to describe an unhallmarked article as wholly or partly made of platinum, gold, palladium or silver. So makers of plated goods stamped words that describe the plating, and those stamps turn up in a great many kitchen drawers.

EPNS

Electroplated nickel silver. A body of nickel, copper and zinc with a thin coat of silver put on with an electric current. Much the commonest mark on British cutlery and hollowware.

EP

Electroplated. The same idea, without naming the base alloy.

EPBM

Electroplated Britannia metal. Britannia metal is a tin alloy with antimony and copper, nothing to do with the 958 Britannia silver standard, and it takes plating well. Teapots and tankards are often EPBM.

A1, A1 quality, AA1, triple plate

Grades of plating thickness that makers used to sell their better lines. A1 is a maker's own claim about how heavily the silver was laid on, and it is not a standard of anything.

BP

British plate. A nineteenth-century plated ware on a nickel alloy body, made before and alongside electroplating.

Nickel silver, German silver, alpacca, alpaca

Different names, and spellings, for the same white base alloy. Icon, the Institute of Conservation, describes German silver as a white alloy made from nickel, zinc and copper. There is no silver in any of them, plated or not.

Silver plate, silver on copper, plated, Sheffield plate on a modern piece

Descriptions of a coating. None of them is a fineness and none is a hallmark.

The names were chosen to sound like silver, and they have done so since the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not illegal: a canteen stamped EPNS was sold honestly as electroplated nickel silver to people who knew exactly what that meant and wanted a full service they could afford.

02

Why there is no silver to recover

The silver on an electroplated piece is real silver. The difficulty is where it is. It sits as a thin film over the whole outside of the object, and the whole outside of a canteen of cutlery is a great deal of surface and very little metal. Taking it off means stripping it chemically, and the silver recovered is tiny for the weight of the piece.

That is why plated items are not bought here, and why a heavy box of plated cutlery is not a better proposition than a light one. Plated pieces can usually be spotted from photographs of the marks and named as likely plate before anybody packs them, which saves you posting them; if they do arrive, they are listed and sent back free. The silver page and the cutlery page say the same.

03

Old Sheffield Plate is a different material

Everything above describes electroplating, which arrived in the 1840s. For about a hundred years before that, plated wares were made by a different process, fusing, and the pieces that survive from it are not electroplate.

The technique was discovered in Sheffield in about 1742 by Thomas Boulsover, a cutler. An ingot of copper was covered with sheet silver, at first on one side only and from about 1770 on both, and heated until the two fused; the fused block was then rolled out and worked as a single sheet. The silver on such a piece is a layer of real thickness worked along with the copper, rather than a film deposited onto a finished object. After 1830 German silver often replaced copper as the base, and production declined once electroplating arrived in the 1840s, having all but ceased by the 1870s.

Sheffield's Assay Office is part of the same story. It has existed since 1773, and in 1774 it moved into a court off Norfolk Street that Boulsover had occupied. From the second Sheffield Act of 1784 it kept a register of makers' marks on plated silver wares made within a hundred miles.

Old Sheffield Plate and electroplate, side by side

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The wired edge is the most useful clue, because it exists for a structural reason. A sheet of fused plate has a copper core that would show as a red line on any cut edge, so makers, especially from about 1790, soldered a silver wire along the rim to conceal it. An electroplated piece has no such problem and usually no such wire.

Where a piece is early, or carries a plated maker's mark, or is an unusual form, it belongs with a specialist dealer or a saleroom rather than with a buyer of metal. The same is true of the better Victorian electroplate: a signed piece by a firm collectors follow is sold as that firm's work, and its value has nothing to do with the film of silver on it. We cannot value either of them, and a price by weight is not a valuation of them from anybody.

04

Recognising plate with nothing but your eyes

You do not need an instrument, and often you do not need the letters either. Three signs usually settle it.

1. No hallmark among the marksBritish sterling carries a hallmark: a sponsor's mark, an assay office mark and a mark for the standard. On English silver that was a lion passant, a small lion walking to the left, until 1999; since then the figure 925 in an oval is the compulsory mark and the lion is optional. Scottish sterling shows a thistle or a lion rampant instead. Plated wares carry letters, a maker's name, or a row of small shaped stamps arranged to look like a hallmark without being one. If a row of marks has no assay office mark in it, it is not a British hallmark; on plated ware it is a pseudo-hallmark.
2. Colour break-through at rims and high pointsTurn the piece to the light and look at the rim, the foot, the edge of a spoon bowl, the crest of any raised decoration and the places most often polished. Copper blushing pink through the silver, or a grey-yellow metal showing, is plate. On fused plate the copper comes through as a warm patch rather than a scratch.
3. The feel of a seam and the weight of the thingRun a thumbnail around the rim and along any join. Sterling often has an applied wire border and soldered seams too, so a wire or a seam proves nothing by itself; copper showing where a wired rim or a seam has worn points to fused plate. Britannia metal under plating is noticeably light for its size and dents softly; sterling has a different heft and rings when it is tapped.

Two things do not work. A magnet is no help, because neither sterling nor most plated bodies are magnetic. And rubbing a piece to see what is underneath damages the object whether or not it turns out to be silver, which is why the guide to testing at home advises against it.

If you want a mark identified rather than guessed at, Sheffield Assay Office holds registers of sponsors' marks going back to 1773 and also compiles a list of electroplaters' marks and trade names, and will research a mark on a fee basis. That is the right route for a plated piece you think may be early.

05

What to do with a plated canteen

A full canteen weighs several kilograms in its case. Packing it up and posting it, only to be told it is nickel alloy, is a common and avoidable disappointment. This order avoids it.

1. Turn six pieces over, from different parts of the box, and look for a lion or a 925 beside an assay office mark. Canteens assembled over several generations are often mixed, and a set that is mostly EPNS can still contain a dozen sterling teaspoons or a sterling serving spoon that came from somewhere else.
2. Photograph the marks on any piece that has no letters, and on any piece whose marks you cannot read. Those are the ones worth asking about, and asking costs nothing.
3. Do not judge the box by the weight of the knives. Sterling knife handles are hollow shells filled with pitch or resin around a steel blade, so they hold far less silver than they weigh, and plated ones are simply plated. Keep any sterling knives with the set. The weighted and loaded silver guide explains why a knife weighs what it weighs.
4. Send photographs first. If you know which pieces are sterling you can send just those; if you are unsure, send the whole canteen, and any plated pieces are listed and come back free.
5. For the plated remainder, treat it as what it is: usable cutlery. A local saleroom may take a good boxed canteen as a lot, a house-clearance sale can take the rest, and a set that is still serviceable can stay in the house and get used.

The photo estimate is made for this kind of sorting. What comes back is a rough idea of which pieces appear to be sterling and which appear to be plate, before you decide whether to post anything. If you cannot send photographs, ring 07369 296063 (6am to 10pm, seven days) and describe the marks.

06

Seller risks and exceptions

• Selling an early piece of fused plate for its metal. There is no metal in it worth having, so a weight-based offer on it is close to nothing, and the object may be worth a great deal more to somebody who collects the material.
• Being offered money by weight for a boxed canteen. A figure by weight for a box marked EPNS can only be a price for plate, not for silver, so ask what the buyer thinks the metal is.
• Assuming a row of marks is a hallmark. Pseudo-hallmarks on plated wares are common and often convincing at a glance. Look for the lion or the 925 and an assay office mark, not for the pattern.
• Polishing hard to make the marks legible. Abrasive cleaners wear away the silver and any engraved decoration, and on plate they cut through the coating and expose the copper. See whether to clean before you sell.
• Splitting a set to see what one part would fetch. A complete boxed canteen sells as a canteen; one missing pieces sells for noticeably less.
• Throwing the box away. On plated wares the case, the fitted tray and the maker's label are part of what a saleroom is buying.

07

When not to use this route

The guide to antique silver or scrap covers the same decision for sterling pieces, and our guide to valuations, appraisals and offers explains which you need. What is taken here is set out on the tea sets and hollowware page, and plate is not on it.