Lovely silver and white opal ring. Most likely plated, or lower grade silver, but I'm not sure which.

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​Is it really silver?

 These days, some unscrupulous factories try to pass off non-silver or silver plated items as being completely made of silver. They also use terms like Tibetan silver, German silver, nickel silver, alpaca, and fashion silver to gloss over the fact that their product contains no real silver at all!

The item should be stamped .925 to denote sterling silver. Sometimes .950 silver is used in items, but pure silver is too soft to be used without alloying it with another metal. I have also run across .900 and .800 silver, which means that the item probably started out as a silver coin and was melted down and used to make jewelry. Even though the items are not sterling silver, they still have a high silver content, and as such are still valuable.

These days, I'm even finding .500, .600. and .700 silver! It's not ideal, but it's beter than plated.

 Now for the bad news…some factories in Asia are stamping their "silver" items as .925…but they are, in fact, NOT .925 silver! Since I am not a metallurgist, I am not in a position to verify whether an item stamped as .925 really is silver or not.

 However, here is my promise to you…if I have my suspicions about an item that is marked .925, I will state it in the item description. At that point, you can decide that the item is cute enough and the price reasonable enough that it is worth buying anyway, even if it is just "costume jewelry".

 If you have ANY questions, drop me a note!

 Miss Rosie