What is Hallmark Silver B

[Happypanda88]

A while ago, I bought a 1952 Canadian silver dollar that was in a mount.

I was only interested in the coin so removed it from the mount.

I am curious to know what purity of silver it is - if it is indeed silver and not plated.

The hallmark / stamp is "Silver B".

Does anyone know what this means ?

[Alex944]

Hi,

 

There's a few things it could be, though I'm not 100% sure whether or not that is a B stamp:

- A lot of metals are stamped with a letter to indicate the year in which it was assayed. Though there is a difference between how a usual stamp look compared to what is on the mount. Usually, these stamps would be marked by a small rectangle, it would look similar to something like this: 

 

It could also be an indication of the quality of the plating done on the base metal. You can find some information on that here: http://www.silvercollection.it/dictionarysilverplatesymbols.html

It may be worth getting it tested if you're really curious, just because the stamp seems to differ from what it usually looks like.

Good luck and curious to hear the result, should you go for testing!