Why 925

Tarnish wipes off. Plating does not come back. Most people have owned a silver chain that stopped being silver about a month in: the shine going patchy around the clasp, a warmer colour showing through where metal rubbed metal. That chain was plated. This page explains the difference in enough detail that you can open any listing, from any seller, and work out what you are being sold.

Every CRESTSIDE piece is solid 925 sterling silver. Nothing is plated and nothing is filled. The weight in grams sits beside the price on every product page, so the claims made here can be checked against the listings.

The short version

• 925 means 92.5 per cent silver. The remaining 7.5 per cent is a harder metal, usually copper. Pure silver is too soft to hold a chain's shape.
• Solid means all the way through. Cut a solid sterling chain in half and the exposed face looks like the outside.
• Plated means a skin. Base metal underneath, silver over the top, measured in microns. One micron is one thousandth of a millimetre.
• Yes, solid 925 tarnishes. It darkens, a polishing cloth takes it back, and that cycle runs for as long as you own the piece.
• Green skin is a copper reaction. On plated jewellery it means the silver has worn through. On sterling it is uncommon, it is surface only, and it washes off.
• Weight is the fastest tell. Silver is 10.49 grams per cubic centimetre. Brass sits near 8.5 and steel near 7.9.

What the 925 stamp means

Pure silver is too soft to wear. A chain made from it stretches under its own weight, and the links go out of shape in the hand without much effort. So silver is alloyed with a harder metal for strength, and the ratio that became the international sterling standard is 92.5 per cent silver to 7.5 per cent other metal, most often copper. That figure is where the 925 stamp comes from.

Solid 925 means the entire object is that alloy. No core of anything else, no layer, no coating.

Understand what the stamp is, though. It is a declaration made by whoever produced the piece, not an independent test. Treat it as the start of the question rather than the answer to it. What CRESTSIDE does about that is further down this page.

925 sterling silver vs silver plated

Plated jewellery begins as base metal. Brass and copper alloys are the usual choices, sometimes steel. The finished shape is dipped in a bath where an electrical current lays a skin of silver over the outside. That skin is measured in microns, and at the cheap end of costume jewellery it can sit under a single micron.

	Solid 925 sterling	Silver plated
Composition	92.5 per cent silver throughout	Base metal with silver on the outside
Density	Silver, 10.49 g/cm³	Brass near 8.5, steel near 7.9
With age	Darkens evenly, returns with a cloth	Thins, goes patchy, then flakes
Skin marks	Uncommon, surface only, washes off	Likely once the layer wears through
Repair	Soldered, shortened, re-polished by any jeweller	Generally cannot be worked on without destroying the finish
Cost	More at the counter	Less at the counter. Re-plating is a paid job.

Why plating runs out

Wear takes it off. A shirt collar, a watch strap, sweat, a sleeve dragging across a bracelet every time you reach for something. None of that is mistreatment. It is ordinary use, and it removes a layer measured in thousandths of a millimetre. Polishing makes it faster, because polishing works by removing surface material, and on a plated piece the surface is the only silver present.

No label prints the date it runs out. Once the layer is through, base metal sits against skin, and re-plating is the only fix. That is a job you pay a jeweller for, and it starts the same clock again from the beginning.

Does 925 sterling silver tarnish?

Yes. It is also the most misunderstood thing about the metal, because a lot of people watch a chain go dark and quietly conclude they were sold a fake.

Silver reacts with sulphur compounds in the air. The product of that reaction is silver sulphide, a dark layer that forms on the outside of the metal and goes no deeper than the outside. It arrives in stages you can watch. A faint yellow cast first, then a warmer brown, then something close to black in the recesses of a link where no cloth has ever reached. Coastal air, gas heating, wool, rubber bands and certain cardboards all speed it up, because every one of them puts sulphur near the metal.

A silver polishing cloth removes it. The cloth carries a very mild abrasive and an anti-tarnish agent, and on a bracelet that has darkened over a few months you are looking at well under a minute of work. The metal comes back to where it started, because nothing was lost in the first place. It will tarnish again. You will clean it again. There is no point along that cycle where the silver runs out.

Plated jewellery does not behave this way, and the difference is the most reliable diagnosis available to a buyer. A plated piece does not darken evenly and then return. It goes patchy first, then it flakes, and what shows underneath is a different colour to what you bought.

The opposite case is worth a question too. A piece sold as sterling that never changes at all after a year of regular wear may be sealed under a lacquer or a rhodium layer. That is not dishonest in itself, but it does mean the surface you are touching is not silver.

Will 925 silver turn your skin green?

The green is a copper reaction. Copper compounds form on a metal surface where copper meets sweat and air over time, and those compounds transfer onto skin. The colour is copper salts. It is not dangerous, and it washes off with soap.

On a plated piece this is close to inevitable, because the base metal underneath is usually a copper alloy and it is only a matter of time before wear exposes it. A green ring on the neck or wrist is the piece reporting that the silver has gone.

Solid sterling deserves an honest answer here rather than a marketing one. Sterling contains 7.5 per cent copper, so it is not chemically impossible for a solid 925 piece to leave a faint mark on somebody, particularly in humid weather, or where sunscreen and hand cream sit trapped under the metal all day. It is uncommon. What matters is the difference in what the mark means.

On sterling it is a surface reaction. It washes off the skin, it lifts off the metal with a cloth, and the piece underneath is unchanged. On plated jewellery the same colour is structural failure, and no amount of washing puts the silver back.

How to tell if silver is real

None of this needs equipment you do not already own. Run it on CRESTSIDE as readily as on anybody else.

• Find the stamp. Sterling is marked 925 somewhere discreet: on the clasp, on a small tag beside it, on the inside of a band, or on the back of a pendant. It is the maker's declaration, so it starts the question rather than settling it.
• Ask for the weight in grams. A seller who can tell you a bracelet is 45.6 grams has physically weighed it. A seller who will only describe it as heavy either has not, or would rather you did not know.
• Read what the listing avoids saying. "Silver tone", "silver finish", "silver colour", "925 plated", "sterling silver plated" and "silver filled" are all ways of saying the piece is not solid sterling. Those phrases are chosen with care by people who do not want to lie in writing.
• Weigh the description against the size. A 22 inch curb chain in solid silver with wide flat links is a heavy object to pick up. If the same chain arrives light enough to forget about, the density is wrong.
• Try a magnet. Silver is not attracted to magnets. If a piece pulls towards one, there is steel inside it and the conversation is over. Passing proves less than people assume, because brass and copper are not magnetic either, so use this to rule pieces out rather than to rule them in.
• Watch how it ages. Six months of ordinary wear settles the question on its own. Even darkening that lifts off with a cloth is sterling doing what sterling does. Patchy loss with another colour underneath is plating coming to the end of it.

The tests that will not tell you much

There is a great deal of advice online that sounds decisive and is not.

• The ring test. Silver does have a distinctive high note when struck, but chain and link shapes damp it out almost completely, and judging pitch by ear against a metal you have never heard cleanly is guesswork.
• The ice test. Silver conducts heat better than any other metal, so ice genuinely does melt faster on it. The effect is easy to see on a flat solid surface and close to invisible on a chain, where there is not enough contact area for it to show.
• The bleach test. Bleach does blacken silver within seconds. It also blackens a good deal of base metal, so you have put a corrosive on your jewellery in exchange for an inconclusive result.
• Acid testing. This one works, and jewellers use it daily. It also requires scratching the piece deeply enough to expose the metal below the surface, which is why it belongs to a valuer rather than to you and a chain you have owned for a week.

What happens before a piece is listed

CRESTSIDE pieces are handmade in Turkey and reach Melbourne through a wholesaler in Rajasthan. Every one of them arrives stamped 925 by the maker, and as covered above, a stamp is a claim rather than a guarantee. That distance is exactly why the check exists.

So every piece is torch-verified by hand in Melbourne before it goes on the site. Held to a flame, plated metal discolours almost immediately, because the layer is thin enough that the base metal beneath it reacts through the surface. Solid sterling comes through the same flame looking the way it did going in.

That check is run on the individual piece rather than on one sample pulled from a batch, which matters most on the pieces where only one exists.

What CRESTSIDE sells, and what it costs

Six pieces at present: two chains and four bracelets, from $390 to $1,290 in Australian dollars. The lightest is the Mamba Chain at 21.5 grams. The heaviest is the Nocturne Lock Chain, 75 grams across 22 inches, at $1,290. The bracelets run from 21.8 to 48.2 grams. Two of the six are the only one of that piece ever made, another was made in a run of two, and another in a run of four.

Every listing publishes the weight in grams, the length measured end to end with the clasp included, the link style and how many were made. Those figures are taken from the pieces themselves, not from a supplier sheet.

Shipping within Australia is free and tracked, dispatched from Melbourne within 3 business days, in a silver-foil velvet box. Unworn pieces can be returned within 14 days. Australian Consumer Law rights apply on top of that policy and cannot be excluded. CRESTSIDE ships within Australia only.

See the six pieces.

Looking after solid silver

Sterling is not fragile, and the routine is short.

• Put it on last, after sunscreen and aftershave have dried. Those products settle into the recesses of a link and hold moisture against the metal.
• Take it off before swimming. Chlorine and salt water both accelerate tarnish, and chlorine in particular goes after the copper in the alloy.
• Wipe it with a soft dry cloth when you take it off at night. This single step does most of the work, because it lifts sweat off the metal instead of leaving it there for eight hours.
• Store it dry and closed, ideally in the box it arrived in. A closed box does considerably more than an open drawer, given that wool and rubber both give off sulphur.
• When it dulls, reach for a silver polishing cloth rather than toothpaste or a household abrasive. A cloth is built for the job and will not put fine scratches through a mirror polish.

Left in its box between wears, a solid silver chain still tarnishes eventually, only slowly. Worn every day it tarnishes faster, and it also stays brighter along the high points, because skin and fabric polish the metal as they pass over it. Both patterns are normal for the alloy.

Questions

Is 925 silver real silver?

Yes. 925 is the international sterling standard: 92.5 per cent silver alloyed with 7.5 per cent of a harder metal, most often copper. Pure silver is too soft to hold a chain's shape, which is why almost no wearable silver is sold pure. Solid 925 is that alloy the whole way through, with no core or coating of anything else.

Is 925 silver the same as sterling silver?

Yes. Sterling silver is defined as 92.5 per cent silver, and 925 is that figure expressed as a stamp. The two terms describe the same alloy. What they do not tell you on their own is whether a piece is solid sterling or a base metal carrying a sterling-plated skin, which is a separate question worth asking any seller directly.

Does 925 sterling silver tarnish?

Yes, and it is meant to. Silver reacts with sulphur compounds in the air to form silver sulphide, a dark layer that sits on the outside of the metal and goes no deeper. A silver polishing cloth removes it in well under a minute, and the metal returns to where it started because nothing was lost. It will tarnish again, and it can be cleaned again, for as long as the piece is owned.

Will 925 silver turn my skin green?

It can, though it is uncommon. The green is a copper reaction, and sterling contains 7.5 per cent copper, so a faint mark is possible in humid weather or where sunscreen and hand cream sit trapped under the metal. It is a surface reaction, it washes off with soap, and the piece underneath is unchanged. On plated jewellery the same green usually means the silver layer has worn through to the base metal, and washing does not bring it back.

What is the difference between 925 silver and silver plated?

Solid 925 is 92.5 per cent silver throughout. Silver plated is base metal, usually brass or a copper alloy, with a skin of silver laid over the outside by electroplating, often thinner than a single micron. Ordinary wear removes that skin, and once it is through, the base metal is exposed. Solid sterling darkens evenly and comes back with a cloth. Plating thins, goes patchy and then flakes.

How can I tell if silver is real at home?

Look for a 925 stamp on the clasp, tag or inside of the band, then ask the seller for the weight in grams, since silver is dense at 10.49 grams per cubic centimetre against roughly 8.5 for brass. A magnet is useful for ruling pieces out, because silver is not magnetic, though brass and copper are not either, so passing proves little. The ring, ice and bleach tests are far less conclusive than they are made to sound, and acid testing requires scratching the piece deeply enough to expose the metal below the surface.

Can 925 sterling silver get wet?

Water alone will not damage it. Chlorine and salt water are the ones to avoid, because both accelerate tarnish and chlorine attacks the copper in the alloy, so take a piece off before swimming. If it does get wet, dry it with a soft cloth rather than leaving moisture sitting in the recesses of a link.

How does CRESTSIDE check that a piece is solid 925?

Each piece arrives stamped 925 by the maker in Turkey, and a stamp is a claim rather than a guarantee. So every piece is torch-verified by hand in Melbourne before it is listed. Plated metal discolours almost immediately under a flame, because the layer is thin enough that the base metal beneath reacts through the surface. That check is run on the individual piece rather than on one sample from a batch.

If something here is still unclear

Questions about sizing, or about anything on this page, are answered by a person rather than a form. Email crestsidejwl@gmail.com.

Every piece is listed with its measured weight and its measured length, so the claims on this page can be checked against the ones on the product pages. See the six pieces.