Postby Aguest » Thu Apr 19, 2018 7:45 pm
I have a piece of Pelican Ware T.W. (Thomas Wilkinson) which is a berry spoon with the fruits in the bowl and it tests positive for sterling as well, and i found another report of it testing positive for sterling silver, so my current theory is that some English Silver Plate circa 1870 used a higher-than-normal amount of pure silver in the electroplating process, and you cannot see the base metal underneath, even in the places where the spoon has been resting on a table for the past 150 years, and this spoon seems to fall into this category___
I have never seen a piece of American Silver Plate which tested positive for sterling silver; even just a simple surface rub does not contain enough silver atoms to make give a positive result using the acid test. Why this English Silver plate circa 1870 tested positive, I really do not know, but this Pelican Ware did for myself and one other person, at least___
Also, I have a report from an antiques dealer whose acid solution got cold because it was in the car overnight, and he reported false positives that morning, again this is an anecdotal report, but make sure your acid solution is room temperature___