Next to gold, silver is the second most popular metal from which jewelry is made. Silver jewelry and household items have been discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs and 5,000-year-old civilizations buried by time. Because it is a metal soft enough to be bent, hammered, and melted, it has been used in combination with other metals to craft items from personal adornments to weapons that brought down empires.
Like gold, silver alone is too malleable to hold its shape and needs to be combined in alloys with other metals, usually copper. Silver alloys are expressed in parts per 1000. Britannia silver is 958 units silver, or 95.8% pure silver. Sterling is 925 units silver, or 92.5% pure silver.
The amount of copper mixed with silver does not seem to determine the pricing; it really depends on the workmanship of the piece, whether it is sterling silver table flatware or a silver ring or pendant. If it is a unique, one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry designed by a silver artisan and cast by the lost wax method, it will be more expensive than a ring, pendant, or cross that is cast with reusable molds. In addition, the craftsmanship in finishing and polishing the item will influence the cost, as will the addition of any gems or stones in the design.
More plentiful worldwide than gold, silver is often found in mining with other metals, such as copper, lead, and arsenic. Its properties of high electrical and thermal conductivity and low contact resistance makes it useful in technology manufacturing. Combined with nitrate, it is photosensitive and is used to develop film. Combined with other chemical compounds, it is used for batteries, cloud seeding, explosives, medicine, instruments, and many other uses. Probably the most common use of silver is in coins worldwide.
In spite of the availability of silver, the high demand in uses other than jewelry keep the price of silver relatively high, but not as high as for gold. As of October 2008, silver is worth about 1/75th the price of gold by mass.
Often sterling silver is the base metal over which gold electroplating is placed, because it is less likely to distort or be damaged than pure gold. Sterling silver jewelry can be plated with a coat of 99% pure silver to give it more shine, called "flashing." Or, to keep it from tarnishing, a thin coat of a very rare metal called rhodium may be electroplated over a silver ring, for instance, for a very bright, white shine.
The popularity of combining silver with turquoise, agate, lapis lazuli and other semi precious stones continues today and is a typical Southwestern jewelry style.
Silver has many practical uses, but the greatest use is for silver jewelry designed into rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants and crosses.
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