Silver, sterling silver and silver-plated jewelry
Silver is a pure metal that can be found on the earth. There are lots of silver mine around the world. Top 5 on silver producing countries are Peru, Mexico, China, Australia and Bolivia.
Sterling silver, on the other hand, is an alloy which referred to a mixing of at least two type of metals together. In the case of sterling silver, a major component for this alloy is silver which typically contain 92.5% of silver with other metal type. 7.5% of copper is generally added to silver for the best quality of sterling silver metal use in jewelry world.
The purpose of copper mixing into silver is to help in improving silver property for jeweler. Pure silver is too soft and unable to make jewelry piece directly. The adding of copper will help in increase alloy strength and malleable while the beauty of silver is still maintain for this proportion. Sterling silver is popular for using in the jewelry world. In comparison with gold price, sterling silver could be your choice to go with for the reasonable metal price and still look great.
Although, price for sterling silver jewelry is more reasonable for precious metal, it’s still quite high. If you are silver lover but cannot really afford for the whole pieces of sterling silver jewelry, there are another options for you. The piece is call silver plating jewelry.
Silver plating is the technique to apply silver over other metal pieces. The cover with silver will give the piece look like it made off silver, but actually it’s not. Anyway, this method is popular use as the piece looks great with lower price compare with the real sterling silver jewelry. However, the problem with silver plated jewelry will come when silver cover is wearing off. At that time, you might have to think again, whether you want to cover it again with silver or just go for the new real sterling silver pieces.
For all the silver jewelry types, all you need to do is take a good care to your silver jewelry. You need to polish your jewelry pieces from time to times. All silver, either pure or sterling silver can get tarnish from reaction with oxygen in the air. You can easily remove all these tarnishes using tarnish remover reagent then, follow by polishing step. Take a good care and then, you silver jewelry will last with you for a longer time with the beauty just like the day you have bought the piece from the shop.



