Silver Purity Chart: Every Fineness Mark and What It's Worth

Every piece of silver carries a number — 999, 925, 900, 800 — and that number decides what it's worth. This is the complete silver purity chart: what each fineness mark means, how to turn it into a percentage in one step, and how purity translates directly into melt value. One page, every standard you'll meet.

Silver Purity Chart: All Common Fineness Grades

Here is the full reference. Every fineness mark you're likely to find on a coin, bar, or piece of jewelry, with its percentage and where it's used. Keep this chart handy — everything else on the page explains it.

Two things fall out of this chart immediately. The higher the number, the more silver the item contains and the more it's worth per gram. And the number itself is a shorthand — once you know how to read it, you can price any silver item in seconds.

What Is Silver Fineness?

Silver fineness is a measure of purity expressed in parts per thousand — how many parts out of 1,000 are pure silver. This system is called millesimal fineness, and it's the international standard for describing precious metal purity. A fineness of 925 means 925 parts out of every 1,000 are silver, and the remaining 75 are other metals.

Fineness is usually written as a three- or four-digit decimal: .999, .925, .900, and so on. You'll see it stamped on the item itself as a fineness mark — sometimes with the decimal point, often without, so "925" and ".925" mean the same thing. The rest of the metal, the part that isn't silver, is called the alloy, and it's almost always copper, which adds hardness and durability that pure silver lacks.

Purity and weight are related but separate ideas, and confusing them is the most common mistake. A heavier item isn't necessarily purer — a large .800 tray can hold more actual silver than a small .925 ring. What matters for value is the actual silver weight: the total weight multiplied by the purity. That single calculation is what our silver calculator runs when you enter a weight and a fineness.

How to Convert Fineness to Percentage

This is the one trick that makes the whole chart usable without memorizing anything. To convert any fineness mark to a percentage, divide it by 10.

So 925 ÷ 10 = 92.5%. And 800 ÷ 10 = 80%. And 999 ÷ 10 = 99.9%. That's the entire method. If you prefer to think in decimals, the fineness mark .925 is simply the percentage 92.5% with the decimal shifted — move the decimal point two places to the right and you have the percentage directly.

It works in reverse too. If you know an item is 90% silver, multiply by 10 to get its fineness: 900. This is why pre-1965 US coins, which are 90% silver, are described as .900 fine. Once this conversion is automatic, the entire purity chart becomes something you can read at a glance rather than look up.

Fine Silver (.999): The Investment Standard

Fine silver is .999 fineness — 99.9% pure — and it's the standard for investment bullion. This is the purest silver you'll commonly encounter, and it's what bars, rounds, and modern government bullion coins are made from. Because it's so close to pure, it carries no alloy to speak of and is valued almost entirely on metal content.

The trade-off for that purity is softness. Fine silver is malleable enough that it scratches and dents easily, which is exactly why it isn't used for jewelry or anything handled daily. It's ideal for bullion, where the item sits in storage and only its silver content matters. The American Silver Eagle is struck in .999 fine silver, as are most silver bars and rounds.

A step above sits .9999 — "four nines" — at 99.99% pure. The Royal Canadian Mint popularized this standard when it upgraded the Silver Maple Leaf to .9999 in 1989. The Australian Kangaroo and some premium bars match it. The practical difference between .999 and .9999 is negligible for value, but four-nines products often advertise the extra digit prominently. One practical note for retirement buyers: only .999 and finer qualifies for a precious metals IRA — sterling and coin silver do not meet the threshold.

Sterling Silver (.925): The Jewelry Standard

Sterling silver is .925 fineness — 92.5% silver and 7.5% alloy, almost always copper. It's the most widely recognized silver standard in the world, and the most likely mark you'll find on jewelry, flatware, and decorative pieces. The copper is what makes sterling practical: it adds the hardness that lets silver survive being worn, used, and handled.

Sterling is the fineness most people mean when they say "real silver." It carries genuine melt value — considerably more than plated items, which have essentially none — though it sits below investment-grade bullion per gram. Many sterling pieces also carry value beyond their metal, through craftsmanship, maker, age, or a sought-after flatware pattern. For the full breakdown of sterling value and how to calculate it, see our sterling silver guide.

Coin Silver (.900) and the European Grades

Coin silver is .900 fineness — 90% silver — and it's the standard for pre-1965 US circulating coins. Dimes, quarters, half dollars, and silver dollars struck in 1964 and earlier all carry this purity, which is why they're prized as "junk silver" — valued for metal content rather than rarity. The date is the giveaway: no fineness stamp needed, just a year of 1964 or earlier. Our junk silver calculator prices these by their .900 content.

Below sterling and coin silver sit the continental European grades, which trip up a lot of people sorting inherited pieces:

.958 Britannia is actually higher than sterling — 95.8% pure. It was briefly mandatory in England from 1697 to 1720, introduced to stop silversmiths melting down coins, and remains an optional British standard today. .835 at 83.5% is common in the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia, sitting between 800 and sterling. .800 at 80% is the classic continental European standard, found on older cutlery and tableware from across the continent. All three are solid silver with real melt value — just lower per gram than sterling. Our guide to 800 and coin silver covers these lower grades in detail.

How Purity Affects Silver's Value

Purity isn't academic — it's the number that sets what your silver is worth. The value of any silver item is its actual silver weight multiplied by the spot price, and actual silver weight is total weight times purity.

Take a 100-gram item at each major fineness, with silver at a $75-per-ounce spot price, to see how much the number matters:

The same 100 grams ranges from about $193 to $241 depending purely on fineness — a difference of nearly 25% driven by nothing but the purity number. This is why identifying the correct fineness before selling matters so much, and why a heavy low-purity piece can be worth less than a lighter high-purity one. To run these numbers for your own items at the live spot price, our calculators handle any weight and purity.

Marks That Look Like Purity But Aren't

Not every stamp on a silver-colored item is a fineness mark, and a few common ones fool people into thinking they have solid silver when they don't. Plated items carry markings that indicate a thin silver coating over base metal, not solid silver.

The ones to recognize: EPNS (electroplated nickel silver), EP (electroplated), A1 (a plate quality grade, not a purity), and "Silver Plate" or "Quadruple Plate." None of these mean solid silver. They describe a microscopically thin silver layer bonded over copper or nickel, with negligible melt value. A genuine fineness mark is a number — 925, 800, 999 — while plate marks are letters or words. When in doubt, our guide on how to test silver covers confirming solid silver versus plate at home.

Common Questions About Silver Purity

The Bottom Line

Silver purity comes down to one number and one piece of arithmetic. The fineness mark — 999, 925, 900, 800 — tells you how much of the item is silver, and dividing it by 10 converts it straight to a percentage. From there, weight times purity times spot price gives you the melt value, whatever the piece.

Keep the chart at the top of this page for reference, remember that plate marks are letters while purity marks are numbers, and you can read the value of any silver item you come across. When you're ready to put a figure on something, enter its weight and fineness into the calculator and the live spot price does the rest.