How to check silver purity at home.

01 · The five tests

Can you really check silver at home?

Yes — with a caveat we'll keep repeating. Five tests you almost certainly have the tools for right now will each lean on a real, measurable property of silver: a magnet, an ice cube, your nose, your ear, and your eyes on the stamp. Run them in under five minutes and you'll know whether a piece is very likely silver or very likely something dressed up as it.

What these tests will not do is read a precise fineness. They cannot tell 92.5% from 99.9%, and they cannot separate solid sterling from a thickly plated fake in every case. For that you need an assay — a destructive fire assay, or a non-destructive XRF scan at an assaying centre. Home tests narrow the odds dramatically; an assay closes the question. Hold both ideas at once and you'll never be misled.

The logic behind all five is the same: silver is a physically distinctive metal. It is the best thermal and electrical conductor of any element. It is non-magnetic. It is dense, soft, and elastic in a particular way. Fakes borrow silver's colour but almost never its physics — and physics is exactly what these tests measure. Here is the whole toolkit at a glance.

• MagnetSilver is non-magnetic. It should not stick — and a magnet should slide, not race, down an angled bar.
• IceSilver melts ice fastest of any metal. A cube on real silver melts in seconds.
• SmellPure silver is odourless. A strong metallic smell points to copper-heavy alloy or plating.
• SoundTap it: silver gives a clear, sustained ring. Base metal gives a dull thud.
• StampLook for 925 or 999, the BIS logo, and a HUID if hallmarked — then read it sceptically.

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A home test tells you what a piece is not. Only an assay tells you exactly what it is.

Atelier note · 2026

02 · Magnet & ice

What do the magnet and ice tests prove?

Start with the magnet, because it is the fastest. Silver is diamagnetic — it is not drawn to a magnet at all. Bring a fridge magnet, or better a small neodymium one, to the piece. If it clings, there is iron, steel, or nickel underneath any silver colour, and you are done: it is not solid silver. Many plated fakes are built on a magnetic core, so this single test catches a great many of them.

There is a more elegant version for bars and coins. Tilt the piece at a shallow angle and let a strong neodymium magnet slide down its face. On real silver the magnet noticeably drags and slides slowly, as if through honey. That braking is Lenz's law at work: the moving magnet induces small circulating eddy currents in the highly conductive silver, and those currents create an opposing field that resists the motion. A fake of low conductivity lets the magnet slip or tumble straight off.

The ice test is the crowd-pleaser, and it rests on a genuinely remarkable number. Silver has the highest thermal conductivity of any metal — roughly 429 watts per metre-kelvin, ahead of copper and far ahead of steel. Set the piece on a table at room temperature, place an ice cube on it, and place an identical cube on a wooden coaster beside it. The cube on the silver draws heat so efficiently that it starts to melt almost at once, often visibly within a few seconds, while its twin sits nearly unchanged. The bigger and more solid the silver, the more dramatic the difference.

Neither test is fooled easily, but read them honestly. A thick, heavy plating over a non-magnetic base such as brass will pass the magnet test and can partly pass the ice test. That is why we never stop at two. The magnet rules out ferrous fakes; the ice rules out most poor conductors; the remaining tests close the gap.

03 · Smell & sound

Can a sniff and a tap tell real from plated?

The smell test is the softest of the five, but it earns its place as a tie-breaker. Pure silver is essentially odourless. That sharp, coin-like metallic smell people call “the smell of silver” is really the smell of copper — the copper in an alloy reacting with the oils on warm skin. Rub the piece briskly between your fingers and bring it to your nose. A clean piece of high-purity silver gives almost nothing; a copper-heavy alloy or a worn plating over brass gives that unmistakable metallic tang.

The sound test is far more reliable, and for coins and bars it is close to conclusive. Balance the piece on the tip of one finger so it can vibrate freely, and tap it gently with another coin. Solid silver answers with a clear, high, bell-like ring that sustains for a second or two before fading. Base metal, and most hollow or plated pieces, give a flat, short thud with no ring at all. The tone comes from silver's density — about 10.49 grams per cubic centimetre — and its particular elasticity, which let it ring like a struck bell.

The sound test does have limits worth naming. Thin, filigree, or heavily set jewellery may not ring cleanly even when it is genuine, because the form damps the vibration. Save the tap for coins, bars, spoons, and solid-bodied pieces, where it is at its most trustworthy. If a piece looks like solid silver but thuds like a bottle cap, treat that as a serious red flag — and if you want the fuller picture of how plated and solid silver differ in the hand, our guide to silver plated vs pure silver lays it out.

04 · The stamp

What does the 925 or 999 stamp really tell you?

Turn the piece over and look for a mark, usually pressed into the base or an inside edge. The two you want are the fineness numbers: 925 means 92.5% silver — sterling — and 999 means 99.9% pure silver. A genuine BIS hallmark adds the BIS logo alongside the fineness, and where the piece is enrolled in the hallmarking scheme, a unique HUID you can look up. For what each of these marks means in full, our silver purity guide reads the fineness numbers in plain English.

Now the honesty. A stamp is a claim, not a proof — dies can be forged, and a “925” pressed into brass is just a lie in metal. Equally, the absence of a stamp is not proof of a fake; plenty of older or handmade solid-silver pieces were never marked. This is precisely why the stamp is one test of five, not the whole answer. Read it alongside the magnet, the ice, the smell, and the sound, and let the tests agree or disagree with the mark.

So here is where we stand. Run all five tests. If three or more point the wrong way, walk away — the physics is telling you something the seller is not. If all five pass, you have good, rational grounds to trust the piece. But for anything bought at solid-silver prices, do not stop at good grounds: insist on a BIS hallmark and a written certificate, and for absolute certainty have it assayed. A fire assay is destructive and exact; a non-destructive XRF scan reads the surface fineness in seconds at an assaying centre. That is the ladder — five home tests to screen, a hallmark and certificate to trust, an assay to be certain.

It is also why we say what ours are without being asked. For the avoidance of doubt about our own work: Nazarana does not sell solid or hallmarked silver. Every piece we make, the largest pieces included, is silver-plated over a base metal, and we say so on the product page, in the quote and on the invoice. This guide exists so you can hold any seller to the same standard — us included. You should never need five tests to find out what you are buying.