Silver Jewelry

Sterling silver is composed of 92.5% silver alloyed with copper to strengthen it. Silver has one of the highest reflectivity of any metal, giving it unmatched brilliance, making it perfect for jewelry designs. Silver also has extremely high electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity. Despite all these wonderful properties silver is relatively abundant and easy to extract from ore, so it is, at the same time, relatively affordable making it ideal for jewelry that will appeal to a wide audience.

At various time in history silver was even more valued than gold and had a mystical allure to it, often being associated with the sea, moon and lunar goddesses. Hallmarking of silver places a stamped mark on the silver to identify its origin and purity and is often an important part of determining the value of a collectible piece.

There are other alloys of silver with a higher content of silver than sterling. Mexican and Brittania silver each have about 95% silver. Coin silver on the other hand typically has only 90% silver.

The cleaning of sterling silver can be a burdensome task, which is why much of the silver jewelry manufactured today has various types of anti-tarnish finishes ranging from a flash overlay of pure silver, waxes, proprietary coatings and the currently very popluar rhodium plating. Rhodium in fact is a much more expensive raw material, but does not have quite the high brilliance of silver, however its superior anti-tarnish property outweigh its lower reflectivity value.

                                                Care and Cleaning of Silver Jewelry

Some silver jewelry is treated to resist tarnishing. Other silver jewelry is supposed to tarnish (patina) to give it an antique look. But, if your silver jewelry is not tarnish proof, you may want to wrap it in tissue paper with anti-tarnish strips.
Cleaning silver jewelry may be done with a polishing cloth and cream that may be purchased in any jewelry store, jewelry department and in most drug stores. A cleaning dip may be used on jewelry that does not contain stones, CZ's, glass, leather, etc.
Try to limit your silver jewelry to exposure to salt water (ocean), body fragrances, soap and household cleaners or chemicals. Do not wear in hot tubs or pools. Some people have a skin chemistry that can turn silver black. This is particularly difficult to clean.



At different times and places in history, silver has been more valuable than gold and though that is not the case today, silver's rise in price, in the past 10 years, has out paced gold. When gold was $360.00 and ounce, silver traded at around $3.00 and ounce. Today, while gold has risen about 400%, silver prices have risen about 900%. Not since the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the silver market in the late 1970's has the price of silver been so high. It reached $50.00 an ounce then. It stands in the high $20.00's today.
How high will it go? That depends on the world economy. A better more stable economy with more jobs, more output and consumption, combined with more personal savings and less debt should bring the price of precious metals down to more affordable levels.
But, until then, treat your silver like gold.