925

925 is a statement about the metal, not about who made the piece. It certifies sterling silver: 925 parts fine silver in every 1000, the remaining 75 usually copper. Pure silver is too soft to hold a setting or survive being worn, so the copper is what makes a ring a ring.

It is the commonest mark in this catalogue and one of the commonest in the world, which is exactly why it identifies nothing on its own. A 925 stamp tells you the metal is sterling and nothing else — not the country, not the year, not the silversmith. If that is the only mark inside your band, the piece is sterling and unattributed, which is an ordinary and perfectly respectable thing for it to be.

You will usually find it struck on the inner shank of a ring, the reverse of a pendant, or the inside terminal of a cuff, and very often beside something else: a country ("925 MEXICO"), a maker's initials, or the word STERLING saying the same thing twice. The other stamp is the one worth looking up.

Worth knowing: 925 became the dominant form internationally in the later twentieth century, so its presence is a soft hint at a modern piece rather than an early one. American work before roughly the 1940s more often reads STERLING in words.