posted 04-19-2008 04:48 PM            

Hello to you all!

A short question from this side: when is a silver object made from melted silver coins?
Is the reason?

- The pure silver was not deliverable (to expensive) for some periods?

- When a silver object is made from silver coins how do you recognize this, by special marks?

- Is there stamped the word "coin silver"in the silver object?

- I've seen some pictures for instance a beerpull (18th century) and coin imprints on it, or silver spoons with at the end of the steel or in the blade a imprint of a coin.

Are these objects in totally mentioned coin silver or is there a difference in explanation?

Reason why I ask this is,because I bought a silver spoon and at the back there is marked the word "muntzilver"(dutch name for coin silver and also a little mark like a knight tampler cross (I hope I explain it well?). I never saw one before, with that inscription.

Can somebody please give a short reaction to this, thanks a lot.

Is there also a indication mark or the use of the word "coin silver" in spoons for instance in America or England?

posted 04-20-2008 06:42 PM            

18th century punch ladles, however, are an interesting exception. There was a fashion for making the bowls from a hammered out silver coin, leaving the inscription round the edge of the coin still visible round the rim of the bowl. The bowls of these ladles were not hallmarked, presumably because they were still visibly made from a silver coin. A second complete coin would often be set into the base of the bowl.

The higher Britannia standard for manufactured silver, imposed from 1697 to 1720, was intended to discourage the melting down of coin which was in short supply.

British sterling silver items from the 19th century onwards will normally have been made from bullion, but the bullion itself may have come from recycled and melted down silverware as well as from new supplies of the raw material. The marks guarantee the standard of the silver but say nothing about where it came from.

posted 04-21-2008 03:03 PM            

Large silver ore deposits were found in the U.S. in the middle 1800s and by the 1870s these mines were in large scale production. Silver became very plentiful and it was no longer necessary to melt old silver to get metal to make new silverware. The U.S. government had plenty of silver to make it own coins. In 1878 the U.S. began large scale minting of its 'silver dollar' coins, for example.

posted 04-22-2008 08:03 AM            

Thank you for very much for interesting information, at the moment I've a lot to do.
Not only think of making new topics, but tonight I will read your reaction with the most attention.

So thanks for explanation and historical facts!
Silverhunter.(Andre).

posted 04-23-2008 03:51 AM            

What a interesting story so thanks again I've readd it now.I shortly send two photo's about the question started from my side. I had never seen such a spoon with the printed words "muntzilver"(coin silver) the kind off cross I can't explain. But that's another story!

posted 04-23-2008 08:14 AM            

It would be nice to think that the Dutch shared the American interest in coin silver as described by Kimo, perhaps inspired by the Dutch silversmiths in early New York. It is dangerous for an Englishman to make suggestions regarding Dutch silver when he knows nothing about it, but I think there may also be a less exciting possibility to consider.

In the English-speaking world a lot of items that include the word silver in their marks are not made of silver at all, but of nickel silver, an alloy of nickel, copper and zinc. I don’t know when Dutch “silver” coins stopped including any real silver, but could “muntzilver” mean the spoon is made of the same alloy as later coins rather than real silver? Or is this an unlikely use of the Dutch language?

Although your spoon has the upturned stem end typical of much of the 18th century, the combination of bowl shape and style of marking point to a late 19th or 20th century date. This is the period when nickel silver spoons with misleading marks are found in my country.

Of course, you have the actual spoon to study and may be confident that it is indeed silver, in which case I apologize for casting any doubt.

Good hunting!

David

posted 04-23-2008 12:36 PM            

quote:

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Term: muntzilver
Termstatus: voorkeursterm
Topterm : Materialen {TOPTERM}
Broader Term: zilverlegering
Engelse Term: coin silver; silver, coin
Scope note : Zilver met de zuiverheidsgraad die wettelijk is vastgesteld voor munten. In de Verenigde Staten van Amerika is dat 90%zuiver en in Groot-Brittannia is dat sinds 1920 50%.
Bron nederlandstalig: Van Dale woordenboek Engels-Nederlands. (Van Dale Lexicografie - Utrecht ; Antwerpen; 1989)

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quote:

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Engelse term: coin silver
Termstatus : voorkeursterm
Topterm: Materials
Used for: silver, coin
Broader Term: silver alloy
Scope note: Silver of the fineness legalized for coins; 90% fine in the United States, 50% fine in Great Britain since 1920. W

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posted 04-23-2008 12:58 PM            

The combination of nickle/copper/zinc which they use/d? in Holland is called alpaca silver. Most we can find the alpaca marks in the stele of a spoon. I don't know if the word Alpaca is used international?

About your question about the silver alloy of the dutch money I've learned about it to look for information today. The dutch name for the coin (with the value of 100 cent) were mentioned gulden (guilder). The meaning of the word "gulden" was formerly the word "gold".

The first dutch guilder was made in 1358.

The coin was a gold guilder of Willem(William) the fifth. Also it was mentioned a "florijn", the dutch gulden was made till
1967.

Some silver alloys were:

In 1816 893/1000
In 1839 945/1000
In 1919 720/1000
In 1954 720/1000
In 1967 they changed the metal and used nickel in stead of silver.

From 1 January 2002 they gave us the euro in Holland and without to share this valuable opinion ( most articles raised double in price)and after 700 years of tradition it was disappeared. I spend my few euro's each day (missing my queen each day)by the way she looked.

This was a short version of a dutch coin.

posted 04-25-2008 05:03 AM            

Dale, I hope I translate it well but I think "voorkeur therm" means, the
therm used as preference in stead of other possibilities. I hope I said it well.

posted 05-31-2008 11:08 AM            

quote:

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I was always taught that the term coin silver in the US referred to a fineness standard and just meant the item was 90% silver and really had nothing to do with being melted down coins.

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Yes, by the late 18th century ingots and sheets and probably some wire at the coin standard were available to the trade in the US. Silversmiths could buy this directly, could melt down coins (some large firms are known to have stockpiled huge numbers of coins), and also could take in old silver to be reworked, including melted down. But the idea of coins being melted down appeals to romantic instincts, just like the idea that southern silver is scarce just because it was melted down and/or buried during the American Civil War (rather than that there never was as much because of demographic, cultural and economic differences in the region). Coin silver really should be understood as a standard rather than an origin.

posted 06-03-2008 05:39 PM            

• Wanted:info on popularity of coin silver
  
• When Coin Evolved to Sterling

posted 06-03-2008 06:15 PM            

quote:

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FWG, Your last response seems contradictory.
Did firms use melted coins or was this just a romantic notion?

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Well, according to the records I've seen, including prior postings here, both. There was a lot more commercially available prepared metal available than the 'coin silver was made from melted coins' story allows for, but there also were firms that stockpiled coins - and undoubtedly small smiths who could work with them if that's what the client brought in, too.

The commercially prepared metal may well also have originated as coins, at some point, but that's not how the romantic version goes. In that version, which we've all heard variations on many times over, G-g-g-great-auntie saved her silver coins for years to be melted down, took them into her local shop where they were quickly turned into table silver just for her. In reality even if she did, by the 19th century at least that smith would more likely have added the coins to his scrap drawer (or barrel, if one prefers the Gorham imagery), giving the customer credit for the metal value rather than immediately melting them down to work with. And in many markets, by 1850 or so at least, the smith would most likely have been selling that customer pieces bought wholesale and perhaps just engraved locally, rather than custom making them to order.

posted 06-03-2008 09:56 PM            

I have a few questions, a little esoteric perhaps, but relevant, just the same.

In the coin silver era, let us say the 1810 - 20 period (pre industrial), and then again the 1840 - 1850 period (industrial), what percentage of the asking price of a silver spoon was labor and what percentage was materials (silver).? Same thing with a teapot?

Secondly, .. How much more could a silversmith make by selling a teapot or sugar bowl made of 85% silver vs 89% or 90% silver? Would the lower quality silver be easier to work? Could labor be saved by using the lower grade silver?

I see nondestructive testing results in both Maryland books ("18th & 19th Century Maryland Silver in the Collection of the Baltimore Museum"" & "Silver in Maryland"), that seem to indicate that while most silversmiths worked close to, or even above 90% silver, a few chose to work below it, 83% at the low end.

Thanks as always.

posted 06-04-2008 11:49 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalikiss:
Lots of more interesting information here...but...it still remains - romance aside - that "coin" silver is a measure of fineness (90% silver), not an indication that an item was made from melted coins. Let's not forget that not all coins were/are 90% silver. U.S. coins were for awhile, but no more. I have a set of coin silver flatware and I know its provenance - it did not come from melted coins, it is simply 90% rather than 92.5% silver.

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It seems that it is appropriate to repeat this passage from one of the threads cited by Rickaed Kurtzman:

quote:

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the Crown would not allow raw silver or bullion to be exported to the colonies in order to protect domestic silversmiths (and the balance of trade), which would force the colonists to import ready made Sterling silver objects from England, but they apparently did not prohibit silver from being made in the colonies if obtained from other lower grade sources, nor did they assay to ensure that sterling coins were not being used. Until the discovery of the Comstock Lode in the 19th Century, there was no commercially viable domestic source of high grade silver ore, so the colonists relied on remelted coins and old silver to produce new objects. Coins of several nations circulated freely as legal tender, but were of varying standards -- chief among these were Spanish Dollars, many of which were obtained through privateering of Spanish ships carrying newly minted coins and other silver (and gold) objects from their Latin American possessions, as well as through trade with the West Indies and other places. These practices grew as they were carried over into the New Republic, and when a standard was finally adopted, it was the standard to which American coins were to be made.

In common usage the term "coin silver" has come to have different meanings, then, depending on the period in which an object was made. Objects made prior to the adoption of a formal coin standard have come to be referred to as "coin silver" because of the common practice of using coins as a source of material for fabrication, whether or not the object was actually made from remelted coins. As the silver used varied in content, no standard applies. After the adoption of the official coin standard, the term has come to refer only to silver of that standard, and only to American silver.

Objects were openly made of Sterling, or only of specific coins of set standards (Spanish dollars, francs, etc.) and so marked by a few silversmiths, after the Revolution, but other than in Baltimore, as discussed above, there was no policing of any standard - there was only the reputation of the silversmith to back his claim. Modern analysis of old objects has shown that the content of silver made in the pre-coin standard period varied widely. I suspect that most silversmiths had neither the ability nor the desire to refine remelted silver to any particular exacting standard. After the adoption of the coin standard, (and later a Sterling standard) commerically refined silver stock could be bought in for use, and old silver taken in by silversmiths could be sent on to commercial refiners for processing.

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posted 06-05-2008 12:43 AM            

The less silver content, the more difficult to work. Silver is very soft; copper is added to harden it. Doubt there would have been any major savings by going down 4% points.

Marc, on you question about the cost percentages, it is not really knowable. Costs do not determine price; price determines costs. In general, the rule is that in Europe labor was cheaper relative to materials; in the US materials were cheap relative to labor. So, the cost of labor in a US spoon would have been more than in an English spoon. But the silver may have had a slight price advantage.

Cost accounting is an esoteric enterprise with current projects. Applying to long ago raises endless issues. How do you apportion a cost to the wood taken from the woodpile when it is used in the smithy not the home? You probably end up doing what self employed folks do today: almost everything gets shoved into the business side of the books.

posted 06-05-2008 09:37 AM            

Ms. Waters recounts that Thomas Jefferson urged Congress to adopt the same standard for plate that England used stating "the taste of our countrymen will require that their fu[r]niture plate should be as good as the British standard." He also urged Congress to set the standard for coinage at the same ratio that the French used (916.6/1000). Instead Congress on April 2, 1792 authorized federal coinage of 1485 parts silver to 179 parts pure copper (892.4/1000) and did not set a standard for plate.

posted 06-06-2008 01:33 PM            

I guess it was with Sheffield plate that plate started to be used as a term for plated items but it was the later widespread use of electro-plated items that led to people beginning to say just plate without a qualifying adjective. Certainly by the mid 20th century this was commonplace. In my youth, before I took any real interest in silver, I would have been quite likely to describe objects as either silver or plate. Now that I know better I distinguish between silver and silver-plate or plated items. I think this would be true of the majority of collectors here, but meanwhile the population at large now understands plate to mean plated and would be puzzled to hear me talking of plate when I mean silver.

I can envisage two books with almost identical titles but very different contents: “Silver Plate in the Dining Room” and “Silver-plate in the Dining Room”. Nowadays I guess the first title would have to be simply “Silver in the Dining Room” to avoid misunderstanding.

posted 06-07-2008 08:33 AM            

I am not sure we did adopt the word directly from the Spanish despite what some dictionaries say. I have seen a reference to plate being used to mean a flat sheet of gold or silver circa 1250 AD. If the usage dates back that far it becomes difficult to claim a direct import from one language to another. However, I suppose the use of the word to mean silver might have received a boost in the 16th century when we did rather well out of looting Spanish galleons bringing silver back from the New World. In any event, the words flat, plate(meaning either a layer or a flat object), plate (meaning silver) and the Spanish plata (silver) all seem to share the same root which can be traced back via Latin to the Greek platys (meaning flat). And all these diverging meanings were just waiting to collide when we began putting a plate (layer) of plate (silver) on another metal.

We continue to use plate to mean silver without too much misunderstanding when the context is clear, e.g. when we talk of church, civic or college plate, but, as I said before, the general public has increasingly come to think that the word on its own refers to plated objects. Because it is usage that shapes language we probably have to accept that it has now acquired that meaning whether we like it or not.

posted 06-19-2008 04:44 AM            

"I esteem it as well politic as reputable, to furnish my self with an handsome Cupboard of plate which gives my self the present use & Credit, is a sure friend at a dead lift, without much loss, or is a certain portion for a Child after my decease..."

For those whose vocabulary is similar to mine, it may be fair to say that politic in this case means smart and a dead lift means a "tight spot."