|
|
Java-E UK - What Are Hallmarks ?
Hallmarks are stamps/indentations on an item which are made by an "Assay office" to indicate/prove various details of the item in question when an item is sold as "Silver", "Gold", or "Platinum". The item is only hallmarked if the Assay Office have tested the item and it passed the various relevant purity tests.
Legally, some silver items do not need to be hallmarked in some situations (e.g. for some lightweight items), but we hallmark all of our items which are sold as silver (even where it's not legally necessary) to help improve provenance of items and to assure our customers that the item is genuine.
Likewise, not all portions of the hallmarks are compulsory (e.g. the date is optional, and other portions of the hallmarks may be optional depending on where the item is being sold to or purchased from), but we still stamp all Silver items with all of the relevant marks to assure the purity/provenance of the item and to assure our customers.
The Birmingham Assay Office make/use all of the stamps (i.e. we do not put any of the marks on our items ourselves; it's all done by the Assay Office) - this also helps to add to the confidence that you can have in our items.
If an item's full provenance is clear, unambiguous, and easily provable (as per ours), then the item will potentially be much more valuable for its size compared to lesser-stamped equivalent items, and the item will also be much easier to sell if provenance is easily proved/shown.
We at Java-E UK believe that provenance on all items that we sell should be given to our customers in as full a way as is reasonably possible so that our customers can be secure in their being able to prove the provenance of the items that they buy from us.
As a lot of our items are very unusual, and we do not have mass production techniques (most items being hand-made by skilled craftsmen, and designed with a small-scale production in mind), we feel that our items are potentially much more collectable than those from many other companies, and we feel it our duty to help prove the value of our items to any of our customers who decide to sell our products on (e.g. through auctions) in later years. We fully appreciate that the sale of our items to our customers is by no means the end of the item's life of sale, as such items are likely to be resold by our customers to other people in later years.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT: The UK has probably the most stringent precious metal and hallmarking consumer laws in the world. No items which are over a certain weight (about 7 grams) can be sold as Silver, Gold, or Platinum in the UK unless they have been hallmarked by one of the 4 UK Assay Offices, and it is the Assay Offices who perform all the purity tests for the relevant items. As we sell from the UK, we are subject to these stringent laws, and we are happy that such laws protect all UK jewellery customers, and that as a result of these laws, UK hallmarked items have probably the best provenance in the world.
|