Is Your Silver Real? Five ways to test if the silver you bought is real. I find a fake!

Is Your Silver Real? Five ways to test if the silver you bought is real. I find a fake!​

I test six items in front of your eyes, and discover that ONE of them is FAKE.

Testing silver
You’ve got it home - but is it really silver?

Items to test:

1 Swiss franc 1958 (83.5% silver) (SG 10.31)
1 Swiss franc 1962 or 1982
1 Swiss franc 1968 (0% silver 100% Cupro Nickel (SG 8.96)
American Silver Eagle 1 ounce
Ear-rings
Silver bar 1kg

Tests:
1. Magnet Test (Magnet)
2. Surface purity test (Diamond tester)
3. Weight and size test (Scale, Callipers, loupe, Internet access)
4. Ping Test (iPhone, or android, coin gripper, wooden rod
5. Specific gravity test (Beaker, Water, Scale, Calculator, Dental Floss)

SPECIFIC GRAVITY = DRY_WEIGHT / CHANGE IN WEIGHT OF LIQUID WHEN ITEM IS SUBMERGED

Material Color Typical Use Specific Gravity
Fine Silver (.999) Silver Bullion coins 10.4885
Sterling Silver (.925) Silver Old UK, colonial coins 10.3753
Coin Silver (.900) Silver US pre-1965 coins 10.3370
Swiss Silver (.835) Silver Swiss coins (pre-1968) 10.2376
German Silver (Cu-Ni-Zn) Silver Modern commemoratives 8.5820
Cupronickel (Cu-Ni) Silver Modern circulation coins 8.9450
Aluminum Silver Low-value modern coins 2.7000
Zinc Silver Modern lower-value coins 7.1300
Steel (Plated) Silver Modern plated coins (e.g. UK) 7.8700
Copper Copper Older and low-denomination coins 8.9600
Bronze (Cu-Sn) Copper Older pennies 8.8775
Brass (Cu-Zn) Yellow-Gold Tokens, some modern coins 8.4110

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Every coin and as much slabs as I can I test in the following ways. 1, buy from only established vendors. 2, weigh/caliper them. 3, Hit them with the magnet. 4, ping test them. 5, Test them in light if I have natural light available. Of them all, after buying from established, I trust the ping most of all, strange as it may sound. With little practice you dont even really need the cell phone app.

I remember some of the $20 USD George Floyd bills we had coming thru on the job and some were so good it was scary so I think its possible for a fugazzi to sneak thru into the inventory of a big player. My ears I trust most of all.

But most issues stopped after I shitcanned FleaBay. Pity too, it could have been great. There ARE very good vendors on it but overall your taking your chances. When they refused to reimburses a lousy $30 fiat order that was never delivered, after years of spending thousands on them, it pissed me off to no end. Just dumping trade with China would make it far more Legit.

Haven't seen the vid yet, although I will.

But for the present, I have two ways of testing. First, I have a retailer I trust. He'll test everything he buys and is willing to test anything a customer buys. I think I can trust the machine - partly because he will extrapolate on it.

For example, I had a spare $2500 laying about, so I thought I'd get a couple 1/4-oz K-rands. He didn't have any in stock, but for the same price he offered Maple Leafs or American eagles.

The Maple Leafs, I know, are pure gold - not a very durable item, in long-term care. I don't intend to bounce them around, but it might happen in a long-term crisis. So I opted for the Eagles.

I asked him to test them. His tester had a special setting for US Mint gold coins. Why? I asked. Because they're an unusual alloy - 92-percent gold and 8-percent silver. As opposed to the smaller amount of copper used in K-rands.

I learned something. Moreover, he also found that a stack of fake World Treasures Mint silver bars I had, were fakes.

We discussed those at length - of course partly because I came to sell them. I guess he was satisfied when he saw I wasn't getting all huffy over his decline - only confused; I'd had those bars for 15 years. So, in figuring out if the bars had any value at all, he steered me to a large metal recycler - which had a gee-whiz computer gizmo that would analyze the composition of the sample.

That's my second recourse. I went there - it wasn't free; they wanted $5 to test. Mostly to stop the nuisance requests. They found the bar was iron and copper - pot metal, basically, with a very-thin veneer of silver. Worthless to recyclers; but I did get a report. They asked to cut a corner off to see the inside metal - I allowed them, and yup, it was crappy copper-ish.

So, two places I'm reasonably confident can/will identify fakes, and not deliberately sell them. Wish I'd known as much when I bought those bars...