What does 925 mean on silver jewellery?

Silver purity is written in parts per thousand. 925 means 925 parts out of 1000 are pure silver, and the remaining 75 parts are another metal, almost always copper. That is what the word sterling has meant for centuries, and it is the standard used by jewellers worldwide.

You will also see:

• 999 — fine silver, 99.9% pure. Used for coins and bullion, too soft for jewellery that has to hold a stone or survive daily wear.
• 958 — Britannia silver, rare in India.
• 800 or 830 — lower-grade silver, common in some imported costume pieces.

A piece with no number at all is not necessarily fake, but it is unverified, and you should not pay a silver price for it.

Yes. This is the single most common question we get, and the confusion comes from the idea that anything less than 100% must be diluted. The opposite is true for jewellery.

Pure silver is soft enough to bend with your fingers. A 999 ring would lose its shape in a week, and a prong setting made from it would not hold a stone. Adding 7.5% copper gives the alloy the hardness to be cast, carved, polished and worn — without meaningfully changing the colour, the feel or the value of the silver content.

What 925 is not: silver plated (a microns-thin silver layer over brass, which wears through), German silver or nickel silver (which contain no silver at all, despite the name), or alpaca. If a listing says “silver finish” rather than 925 or sterling, read it as plated.

In India, purity is certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards. A BIS hallmark on silver is a set of marks applied after the piece has been tested at a licensed assaying centre, and it is your proof that the 925 stamp is accurate rather than decorative.

A BIS silver hallmark carries:

• The BIS standard mark.
• The purity grade, shown as 925 for sterling silver.
• The assaying and hallmarking centre’s identification mark.
• The jeweller’s identification mark.

The marks are small, so you will usually need a loupe or a phone camera on maximum zoom to read them. Every Avira piece is hallmarked and ships with a certificate of authenticity — this is where it is made.

None of these replaces a hallmark, but together they catch most fakes before money changes hands.

1. The magnet test. Silver is not magnetic. Hold a strong magnet close: if the piece jumps to it, there is a ferrous metal core and it is not sterling. Passing this test does not prove it is silver — brass is not magnetic either — but failing it is conclusive.
2. The cloth test. Rub the piece firmly with a clean white cloth. Real silver leaves faint black marks on the cloth, because you are lifting off oxidised surface silver. Plated pieces that have never tarnished leave nothing.
3. The ice test. Silver conducts heat better than almost any metal. An ice cube placed on a silver surface melts noticeably faster than on steel or brass of the same thickness.

For anything expensive, ask the seller for the hallmark and the invoice. A jeweller who will not show you either is telling you something.

The price of a silver piece is the metal plus the work, and the work is usually the larger half. Metal cost is the weight in grams multiplied by the current silver rate, adjusted for 92.5% purity. On top of that sits making charges, which cover casting, stone setting, finishing and hallmarking, and then GST.

This is why two chains of the same weight can be priced very differently: a machine-made link and a hand-finished one take very different amounts of bench time. It is also why a heavier piece is not automatically better value.

Our prices move with the live silver rate rather than sitting at a fixed number, so what you see on a product page is what the metal is actually worth that day. Browse the collection to see how weight and making charges play out across categories.