[Jewelry making - Article 01049] - Re: [Orchid] Sterling silver definition

[M. Osedo (Studio Cute)]

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>     also be 7.5% 999 fine silver - the absurdity inherent in that case
>     is that 999 fine silver would then be Sterling silver. If the
>     ''National 

    No...not that fine silver would become Sterling, but that a seller
    would not be misrepresenting the silver content of an item (99.9%) by
    declaring it at least 92.5% silver. That's hardly an illogical
    premise, or an absurd one, since outside of people who care about the
    intrinsic properties of metal they're trying to work with, the
    average consumer probably doesn't give a flip about whether the rest
    of the material in the "silver" ring is copper or nickel or
    palladium, not counting the folks who have nickel allergies and have
    to be careful about that. 

    It would merely be absurd on the seller's part to do so, since
    that'd be undervaluing the precious metal content of the piece. And
    since the point of that law isn't to define the exact
    chemical/physical formula for sterling but to ensure that consumers
    aren't getting tricked into buying less precious metal than they
    think they are, that's probably why the law is so vague on the issue
    of exact makeup but is so intensely precise in terms of minimum
    silver percentage and proper marking. 

    And by the way, a "binary" alloy simply means that it's using two
    elemental metals (or two kinds of atoms). Unary, Binary, Ternary. 

--M. Osedo


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