Silver plated vs pure silver — the honest difference.

01 · The two things

What is silver-plated, and what is pure silver?

They are not two grades of the same thing — that is the confusion the market quietly relies on. Silver-plated means a very thin skin of silver, often just 3 to 20 microns, has been electroplated onto a cheaper base: brass, copper, nickel, steel, or even a resin casting given a metal shell. Pure silver, graded 999, is solid silver all the way through, 99.9% fine. One is a costume; the other is the metal.

A micron is a thousandth of a millimetre. A human hair is roughly 70 microns across. So the silver on a typical plated gift is a fraction of a hair thick — enough to catch the light beautifully on the day it is unwrapped, not enough to be worth anything by weight. Nearly the entire object, underneath, is base metal you would never buy on its own.

This matters because a great deal of what is sold as a “silver gift” in India is plated brass or resin dressed to look like solid silver — and priced closer to solid silver than the few microns of metal could ever justify. The piece photographs like an heirloom. It is, in truth, a well-finished souvenir. There is nothing wrong with that, provided you are told which one you are buying.

Solid 999 sits in a different world. It is soft, dense, and honest: what you hold is what you own, and its value tracks the silver rate rather than the marketing. It can be melted, re-tested, and re-valued decades later. A plated piece cannot — there is almost nothing there to melt.

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Plated silver is priced by how it looks. Pure silver is priced by what it weighs. The trouble starts when the first is sold at the price of the second.

Atelier note · 2026

02 · In the hand

How can you tell them apart in seconds?

You do not need a laboratory. Four checks, done at the counter, will catch almost every plated piece dressed as solid silver. We walk buyers through them constantly, and we lay them out in full in our guide to how to check silver at home.

Start with the weight in your hand. Solid silver is dense — 10.49 grams per cubic centimetre — while brass is around 8.5 and resin is a fraction of that. Pick up two bowls of the same size and the pure one sits heavier, almost surprisingly so. A “silver” idol that feels light for its bulk is very likely hollow, plated, or resin-cored.

Then look for a stamp. Genuine solid silver carries a mark — 999, 925, or a BIS hallmark — usually pressed into the base or an inside edge. No stamp is not proof of a fake, but on a piece being sold at solid-silver prices, its absence is a question worth asking out loud. For what the marks mean, our silver purity guide reads the fineness numbers in plain English.

Next, a magnet. Pure silver is not magnetic, so a fridge magnet will slide off. If it grips, there is a steel or iron core beneath the plating. This test is honest but partial — brass and copper cores are also non-magnetic, so a magnet clears them wrongly. That is precisely why weight and a stamp still matter. Finally, ask for a certificate of authenticity stating the fineness. A seller of solid silver can produce one; a seller of plated gifts, honestly, cannot.

• WeightPure 999: dense, 10.49 g/cc. Plated: light for its size — brass ~8.5, resin far less.
• StampPure: a 999 / 925 / BIS hallmark on the base. Plated: usually unmarked, or marked 'EPNS' / 'silver plated'.
• MagnetPure: never sticks. Plated: sticks if the core is steel — but brass cores fool this test.
• WearPure: never wears through. Plated: rubs to a yellow or grey base at edges over years.
• CertificatePure: comes with one stating fineness. Plated: rarely, if ever.

03 · Price

Why is one priced by design and the other by weight?

This is the heart of it, and once you see it you can never un-see it. A silver-plated piece is priced by its design — the form, the finish, the craft of the base and the quality of the plating. The few microns of silver are almost incidental to the cost. That is why a beautifully finished plated gift can be honest, useful, and affordable, starting from ₹1,500. You are paying for how it looks and how it is made, not for a store of metal.

Solid 999 is priced the opposite way — by weight. The formula is transparent: rupees per gram at the day's silver rate, plus a making charge for the form, plus 3% GST. A heavier piece simply costs more, because there is more silver in it. A 200-gram bowl at a spot rate near ₹280 per gram is roughly ₹56,000 in metal alone, before making and tax. Nothing about that number is a mystery, and nothing about it is marketing.

The abuse to watch for is the piece that is priced like solid silver but built like plate. If a “silver” idol the size of your palm is being sold for a solid-silver sum yet weighs a third of what solid silver that size should, you are paying metal prices for a costume. The four checks in the previous section exist precisely to stop that. When a plated piece is priced as plate, everyone wins; the problem is only ever the mismatch.

04 · Which one

So which should you buy — and what do we sell?

Our position is not that plated is bad and pure is good. It is that each has an honest use, and the buyer deserves to know which is which. Choose silver-plated when the design is the gift — a decorative platter for a large guest list, a return gift where the gesture and the look matter more than the melt value, a piece meant to be admired rather than banked. A good plated gift, sold as plated, is a fine thing.

Choose solid 999 when the piece is meant to be kept, valued, or handed down — a Dhanteras coin, an idol for the pooja room, a wedding gift, anything you would want to re-value or pass on in thirty years. It costs more because it is worth more, in the most literal sense: it holds silver by weight and passes the hallmark cleanly.

And here is where we stand. We sell both — and we label both honestly. Our everyday and volume gifting includes fine silver-plated pieces, always described as plated, starting from ₹1,500. Our Luxe line is solid 999 pure silver, hallmarked and sold by weight with a certificate. We never call a plated piece “silver” without the word “plated”, and we never quote a plated item at solid-silver prices. That is the whole difference, and it is the whole promise.