Sterling silver is a common name in the jewelry industry. It ranks among the most valuable metals for making jewelry.
In our daily life, silver always refers to pure silver or fine silver, which means the jewelry is made of 99.99% silver. The marks stamped on these pure silver jewelry are usually S999.
However, the soft nature of pure silver makes it difficult to be used in making different shapes of jewelry, so a lot of jewelry on the market is made of 92.5% pure silver and the remaining 7.5% is for other metals such as copper or nickel among others. These jewelry usually are named sterling silver jewelry.
The alloy form is strong part and durable, which can increase the hardness of the jewelry and create a variety of jewelry shapes. Sterling silver jewelry is usually engraved with identification marks such as 925, S925, 92.5% or sterling silver.
You might like to check more marks stamped on the jewelry in this post: